Welcome into Heaven!
It was the hardest thing Julie Ward has ever had to do. Seventeen-year-old Nerdak looked at her with his trusting eyes and listened to her explain the hard news, struggling to understand.
Tests showed a “huge, aggressive, untreatable, cancerous mass in his right lung,” Julie says. “No medicine could help him. There was nothing the doctors could do.”
She had taken Nerdak to the hospital with suspected pneumonia. Now Julie and her husband, Dave, flew him home to be with his family—with a much more difficult diagnosis.
Dave and Julie minister to a group of Brook’s Point Palawano people. Nerdak had been coming regularly to the chronological Bible teaching on Wednesdays. When Dave and Nerdak’s uncle, a new believer, shared with him the final lesson on the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, he told them he believed that Jesus was the Deliverer who paid for his sin on the Cross.
He also asked to keep the teaching picture they had shared with him that depicted Jesus welcoming people into Heaven. Dave hung the picture up where Nerdak could see it easily.
Soon after, on a Sunday morning, Dave and Julie hiked and motorbiked out of the village where Julie caught a van to go and do some supply buying in the provincial capital. When Dave arrived back at noon, he was met by Nerdak’s father with sad news.
“Nerdak had died at about 7:30 that morning,” writes Julie. “He had not been in pain; mercifully, he just went to sleep. His body was still in their house. Dave was able to help the guys carry him across the river where they buried him.”
It was a hard and sad loss for Dave and Julie personally, and yet their hearts are celebrating Nerdak’s promotion to the incomparable glory of being with Christ. “While we cannot understand the Lord’s purpose in all of this, we can rejoice, knowing that Nerdak is safe in the Everlasting Arms and that we will see him again one day,” Julie shares.
“Please pray for Nerdak’s parents,” she asks. “They are devastated and have no hope. Pray that they, too, will want to listen to God’s Word and will find hope and comfort in Christ.”
Nerdak is rejoicing in Heaven today because God sent Dave and Julie Ward to share the Good News about Jesus with his tribe. Who will be in Heaven because you shared God’s Word with them? There are more tribes waiting to hear. Find out how you can go.