When Chest Pain Becomes Paranoid Delusions, Demonic Voices, and Suicide
I recently had a patient who came in to the hospital for chest pain. But it turned out that his chest pain wasn’t a heart problem—or any problem, really. It was temporary, and brought on by sheer panic. Why? Because the voices in his head were threatening him, making him paranoid, delusional, and suicidal—all of […]
Renewing the Vows with a Miracle Ring
At the end of last year I was at a Love After Marriage seminar/workshop to work on my marriage. While that doesn’t sound like great news, the truth is that from time to time in marriages we all run into problems—whether expected ones, unexpected ones, or ongoing persistent ones we just aren’t sure how to […]
Living out the “As We Go” Mission
My checked bag had gotten misplaced on the trip home from Peru, somewhere in-between Iquitos and Los Angeles—so when I arrived in Austin I filed a claim for lost luggage, then went home. The next evening I got a message telling me that not only had it arrived in Austin just a short time ago, […]
Taking Homeless Drug Addicts to Dinner
One of the things I love about going on mission trips with Overseas Missions is that we just don’t do what is expected of us. Most short term mission trips seem to involve preaching at churches, building something for people, and/or feeding the poor. All of these are good and have their place, but they’re […]
Finding Gold in the Dust
One of the things we did in Peru 2023 was to hold medical clinics. In fact, one of the things Overseas Missions has done on many of their trips is to hold medical clinics as an outreach method. We give people actual medical treatment to the extent we can, then we send everyone to our […]
Training a Son of Our Father To Heal the Sick
One of the things we did in Peru 2023 with Overseas Missions was hold medical clinics, which, being a nurse, I play a role in. The clinic process usually involves seeing patients, assessing their needs, giving medications where possible, then sending the problem list (written on a piece of paper with their name) to the […]
Healing the Bora Chief
During my time in Peru with Overseas Missions, we spent a day on a tributary of the Amazon. We saw some cool animals (sloths, crocodiles, weird turtles, macaques, and more), swam in the river, and toward the end of the day we stopped by a village of the mostly-indigenous Bora people. Their chief, Walter, was […]
A Night with the King
During the 2023 Peru Mission Trip with Overseas Missions, one of the things we did was hire prostitutes. Now, it sounds terrible when I say it that way, but the REASON we hired them was so we could have their undivided attention to throw them a party. You see, our team leader reasoned that since […]
Eternal Life in the Age to Come
In Mark 10:29-30 Jesus said some pretty spectacular things. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, […]
The Spiritual Significance of a Ring
In the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), there is a parable that loads of sermon messages get preached on with some regularity, at least in the United States. In fact, I can’t even count the number of sermons I have heard on this particular passage myself—the subject of the Prodigal Son. Most sermon […]