Philip's story God answers prayers through people who make themselves available to help others. One of the main goals of SOS is to get help to those who need it as soon as possible, says Gertina van Eeden, founding member of SOS West Rand. A group of our Church members went to a local hospital to do reach out work one Saturday morning. Here they met a young man, Philip, who after a second attempt at suicide was being tended by nursing staff. Philip's drug problem has lead to a hopelessness, wanting to make an end to his life because he was not able to come clean. The group spent time with him and prayed with him before moving on to the next patient, says Gertina. Prompted by the Holy Spirit, one of the men in the group turned back to Philip and asked him whether he really wanted to be helped? Philip replied: Please sir! Within a few days the good Samaritan and a member of SOS was driving Philip to a Regeneration centre in the Great Karoo (a dessert-like landscape about seven hours from Johannesburg) where another group of committed Christians were waiting to receive him and lead him back to the Lord and turn his life around. Here at Nieuwefontein Philip got healed to the point that when Gertina and husband, Ernest passed by that way a month later, they were ecstatic to meet the vibrant young man standing in front of them. He walked towards them with outstretched hands and greeted them with the words: Hi, I am Philip! Is God not great? He heals broken people! Phil en Mavis, his parent's reaction at the time: The miracle that God started in Philip's life is proof of the love of Jesus Christ that we see in what others are doing for him. We do not even know everyone's names that was involved in our son's life during this period, but we know that the Lord says by helping even the most insignificant person, it was done onto the Lord. Our son was healed after 12 years of being broken! It has taken Philip's parents a long time to even share their son's addiction problems with anybody. The fear of others ostracising them or hurting them with words made it the more difficult for them to reach out for help during this crisis in their lives. *Please note that although the good Samaritan in this story did carry the financial burden of Philip's recovery, it is not custom for SOS to pay for rehabilitation processes. Our support is offered in other ways. Marius' story: Sharing you painful experience with others lightens the burden. Finding out that your child is a drug addict is any parent's worst nightmare coming true. We had no reason to suspect that it was going on in our house. We had the 'normal' upheavals of having a 17-year old adolescent, typical fights about get-your-act- together went on continuously, but not in a million years did we believe he was on drugs. Much later we realised that we were in denial', because we were not able to acknowledge the possibility that our son was using, while the problem was staring us directly in the face. The constant fighting was also making me feel bad for not 'trusting his judgement'. There was much more things happening at the time, but I choose to look the other way. Ignoring the challenges we were encountering. Then he stole a cell phone from one of our friends. Luckily our friend was relentless about getting his cell phone back and confronted us directly. We had no option, but to confront our son who, being the good liar he was, ensured us that he had nothing to do with it. Our friend was not going to leave the matter there and persisted. For the first time, we were forced to question our son's word, and decided to go through his room and personal things. Under a floor-board in his cupboard we found, not only the cell phone, but to our horror needles, a burnt spoon and other things. We were stupefied. Writing about this now brings back all the terrible feelings of utter anguish and disappointment. We were shocked and disillusioned. Fear took over. What if the drug dealers came into our house? Suddenly we were faced with a major crisis and we did not know what to do, where to go. One's first reaction is to clamp down, nobody must know about this. But fortunately the anger broke through and the first person I met (outside our family circle) was greeted with my hysterics as I blurted the news out. It must have been my saving grace. I should point out that earlier our relationship got to a point that I thought I could not carry on and I was asking God to rescue us all, specially my son, who has become unreachable. This was a few months before the big event. Today I realise that it was God's way of starting to clean up this mess. I will always thank God for intervening and sending people on our way to help us through this terrible time. It is now ten years later, my son has by the Grace of god cleaned up wonderfully - he today has his own little family and a life with great plans ahead. |
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