December 2008. Estevan Medina needed urgent help. “I remember walking into the hospital, and they could tell I was drunk. They gave me a breathalyzer, and the breathalyzer was a 0.67. And the doctor was like, ‘I don't know how you are having a coherent conversation with me right now. You should be in a coma or dead’.” It was pneumonia that landed Estevan in the hospital, but doctors soon found more. His liver was failing giving him only a 5% chance of living a few more weeks. He recalls, “My mind was just going a hundred miles an hour, you know, in disbelief and just struggling with it. Where did my life go? I didn't even get to live life.”  

Though just 28, Estevan had spent nearly half his life behind bars, starting when he was 12. For him, prison felt safer than home. Estevan says about prison, “I wasn't gonna have to worry about my next meal. I wasn't gonna worry where I was gonna lay my head at night. I felt secure.” Raised by drug-addicted parents, Estevan found acceptance by joining a gang, entering a cycle of crime and incarceration. In 2003, at 23-years-old Estevan married Lisa while serving time for a parole violation. After his release, Lisa pushed for change. She says, “I wanted him to get out of the gangs and I wanted him to work, and we wanted to build a family.”  Yet, Estevan recalls, “I feel like, when I got out, I didn't have a purpose. So, I started drinking. What it did was create more problems. My home now was chaotic.”

As his drinking spiraled out-of-control, Estevan realized he’d become like the man he hated… his dad. Estevan recalls, “Even though it wasn't with hard drugs, it, I was just like him with alcohol. And I came home one day, and me and my wife were fighting and I went to pick up my son and he gave me a look and he pulled away from me. And that look, and the way he pulled away reminded me of me when I was a kid, and it broke my heart.”  Wracked with guilt, Estevan left and would spend the next two years homeless …… drowning himself in alcohol. He recalls, “I would get a gallon of vodka and sit there and drink that; I’d kill that within a 24-hour period.  Then in December 2008, after landing in the hospital with pneumonia, he learned his liver was failing and he was dying. Lisa, despite her bitterness, went to see him. She says, “I really wanted to tell him how disappointed I was in him, and I actually felt compassion and the love that I still had for him when I saw him in the hospital.”

Unsure what to do, Lisa turned to her Christian mother for hope and guidance. Lisa recalls the talk, “She told me, only God can help. And I said, well, I want him to come into my life. I'm ready to give my life to him 'cause I need his help. I felt at peace, and I felt free from my own sin. I felt God's spirit come over me at that moment.”  That same evening, Estevan, alone in his hospital room, started blaming others for his condition. He says, “Then I get to God and I'm like, ‘God, if you're real, why? Why are you letting me? Why are you letting this happen to me?’ And I heard a voice, and it said, ‘I didn't do this to you. Your sin did this to you’. And I realized that nobody put me there but myself. I was like, ‘God, help me because I don't want to be like this no more’. Took the scared feeling away, it took the fear, it just took it.” The next morning Lisa returned, and now both saved, the two reconciled. Now they determined to trust God, despite the doctors’ grim outlook. Estevan says, “They didn't give us no hope. No, they didn't, they didn't want to try anything. They looked at my appearance, they looked at my background, and the doctors pretty much said, ‘we don't help people like you. You did this to yourself. These are the consequences.”

Amazingly, Estevan hung on nine more months, even as his body continued to deteriorate.  Still, he and Lisa believed God for a healing. She believed, “In the darkest times, you praise God because that is when God moves the greatest. I would continue to, to say, my husband is not gonna die. He's gonna live. And they would look at me like I was crazy, but I kept going. I kept going by faith and not by sight.”  His one chance was a liver transplant. Standing before the transplant review board, Estevan needed to convince them to put him on the organ recipient list. Estevan recalls the meeting, “I prayed and surrendered it to God. There was no positive accomplishments from my past that I could use or say. The only thing that I was able to tell 'em is that I've surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I want to raise my kids, and I want to help others.” Now frail and ashen, Estevan waited as weeks passed without word. Then on July 6th the letter came. He recalls, “We open it, and it says, congratulations, you've been able to be put on the transplant list. So, me and my wife are, you know, hallelujah. I praise God. And the doctors come in and they're like, ‘don't get your hopes up. Most people wait up to five years, like, you're gonna probably die waiting’.” 

Three days later, they had a perfect match. Lisa recalls, “We were definitely shouting and just praising God for this miracle that he was doing and that the promise had come.” Following the 15-hour surgery, Estevan started recovering immediately. Six months later his new liver was working perfectly. Both Estevan and Lisa knew without a doubt their miracle came through prayer and faith in God. Estevan says, “He brought everything back. Like, you know, my family, the love, my life. He's just amazing.” Lisa is happy too, “I just felt like so thankful again to God and just like so excited that, now we could live life again. My husband could go on with his life and just that God is just good and faithful to his promises.” Today, Estevan shares his story of redemption and healing with youth, gang members, and inmates, proving that through Jesus, there’s always hope. He believes, “It's possible to change no matter what we've been through, no matter what lifestyle we've had. No matter what situation you're in life, there's hope, no matter how bad it seems, there's hope and through Jesus Christ.”

Melanie Palmer said, “When the hurricane [Helene] came through Valdosta, I was at my friend’s house. I have a manufactured home, and she has a regular house. She told me to come on over there so I would be safer. So, I spent the night there with my two little dogs. You could hear that wind on both sides of the house, you know, going, going through it, really bad.”

The next morning, Melanie Palmer headed back, praying her home had been spared.

Melanie explained, “The first thing I saw was all the trees. And I said, ‘Oh my goodness.’ And you couldn’t even see my house hardly, but I did see the roof.”

Her prayers for her home were answered, but her yard was full of uprooted and snapped trees. Living on her limited savings, she didn’t know how she would pay for them to be removed.

“They charge a thousand dollars a tree around here. I counted about 7 or 8 trees down. So, it was pretty bad,” said Melanie as she let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t have insurance on my home. They won’t insure it.”

Melanie would soon receive help from Operation Blessing!

Melanie said, “I didn’t expect anybody to get here as quick as they did. It must have been about twelve people, you know. And I didn’t realize that they had the equipment they had and were able to do so much work today. I said, ‘Oh, if they come it’s going to take a week,’ but I’m amazed that they just about got it done in one day. I’m an Operation Blessing fan now. I’m going to tell everybody! You all are the real thing.”

What a beautiful example of how CBN partners share the love of Jesus around the world with people in need! If you’re not yet a partner, we invite you to join us today. Help bring God’s love through initiatives like clean water wells, medical missions, feeding programs, and so much more—all in the name of Jesus! Join us today and become a part of what God’s doing through CBN partners. 

“Farming accidents have always been one of the main things that have scared me,” Kelly Griggs said as she recalled the tragic event that befell her husband. 

It was September 22nd, 2020, in Crockett County, Tennessee, when Kelly Griggs and her husband Matt, a fifth-generation farmer, had just completed the corn harvest for the season. They both left for their house separately, with Kelly being the first to arrive. But after a few minutes of not hearing or seeing Matt’s combine harvester coming up the road, she began to feel uneasy. 

“He was literally right behind me after I left the field,” Kelly said. “You can hear the combine two, three miles away, so it kind of made me worry.” 
 
Kelly was getting into her truck to go check on Matt when she received a phone call from her neighbor.

“'Miss Kelly, this is Noland, Matt's had an accident,'” Kelly remembered hearing when she answered the phone. “'He's hurt. He's really hurt.’ And that's when I basically floored it.”

Matt was only a couple minutes down the road from the house when his combine hit a rough spot causing it to bounce out of control. Not wearing a seatbelt, he was launched through the windscreen and landed hard on the pavement just feet from the 20-ton combine’s front tire. As Kelly came over the hill she caught her first glimpse of the combine’s wreckage and her mind went to a dark place.   

“I thought, he’s been run over,” Kelly said with fear in her eyes.

Meanwhile, Dr. Mike Revelle, Medical Director and Chief of Emergency Services for West Tennessee Healthcare, heard on his scanner that Matt had been ejected from the combine. A friend of Matt’s, Dr. Revelle immediately went to meet the ambulance at the hospital to see to him personally.

“I expected, based on the report from the EMS that he would be very injured,” Dr. Revelle said. “Once you're thrown from a vehicle all bets are off.”

As Matt was being evaluated by Dr. Revelle in the emergency room, Kelly was outside contacting as many people as possible and asking for prayer.

“I don’t know what it was, but there's like someone telling me to call my friends,” Kelly said. “My grandmother always taught me, ‘If you can't pray for yourself, then get others to pray for you because multiple voices are better than one.’"

Matt had a crushed vertebra, five broken ribs, and a severe concussion along with abrasions down his back. But what amazed Dr. Revelle was that Matt had no internal bleeding or other life-threatening trauma.

“You combine that sudden stop and being thrown through a windshield, bounced off a steering wheel, slammed onto the pavement, and then by the grace of God not run over by whatever you're in...absolutely surprised that his scan was clean as it was,” Dr. Revelle said in amazement.

Matt was discharged from the hospital the same day. It wasn’t until he got home and inspected his combine that Matt realized his miraculous survival came down to only three wires that kept him from being run over.

“Those three wires had been cut cleanly in half,” Matt said as he described his post-hospital discovery. “But the rest of the bundle was still intact. It should have still kept moving forward. There's no logical reason for just those three wires to be cut, but those three wires is what stopped the machine. Well, there's only one way to explain it – The Good Lord put his protective hand over me. God is the only thing that can break the laws of physics and stop 40,000 pounds moving at 22 miles an hour, in its tracks.”

Dr. Revelle also gives credit to God for Matt’s outcome.

“Well, you know, I think that's part of what faith is, you have to believe,” Dr. Revelle said. “And I see things every day that I can't put one and one together to make two that happened. But, you know, I think He had a hand in this. God blessed Matt to still be able to climb in and out of that cab and give those directions, just like he always has.”

It took several weeks of recovery before Matt was back on his feet and ready to get behind the wheel of his combine again. Both he and Kelly believe it was prayer and their trust in God’s protection that ultimately saved Matt. 

“I can't imagine anybody going through this experience without having faith,” Kelly said. “And I think the most powerful thing you can do is ask someone to pray for you.”

“It was an amazing experience to be able to feel the power of the prayer, the presence of the Lord,” Matt said with gratitude. “Every day I'm able to step out on this farm, I mean, it's a blessing. The accident showed me that life's short. You know, just try to be a little bit more easygoing and appreciate everything that God's given me.”
 

“They put the gun to my mom's head first, and they said, "If you don't give us the drugs and the money, we're going to kill your wife." He pushed one of them, they turned around, and they shot my father. My dad died instantly at that moment,” said Patti Romereo. Her father did whatever he could to provide for his family of eight, including selling drugs. When she was 15, he was beaten and murdered by a group of young men.  She continues, “I remember running and hugging my sister, and just crying and crying and crying uncontrollably, and not understanding why did our dad have to leave.”

Her father’s killer, Audi, a 17-year-old, was arrested and sentenced to prison. Patti was filled with anger towards the young man for taking her dad and ruining her life.
Patti recalls, “I think all of my brothers and sisters were really angry, because we were like, "Now we're going to be stuck with our mom." And our mom was abusive to us when we were little, and growing up. And my dad didn't know it because he was always going out of town. And so, I thought love was abuse, so I stayed in an abusive relationship after my dad was murdered, thinking that that was love. Then I was a single mother at 16. At 18, you know, I had already dropped out of high school, I ended up becoming a stripper. I just got lost in the drugs, in the alcohol. And I don't think I ever really dealt with my father's trauma, what I had went through, because I was in survival mode.”

Deeply wounded and lacking any hope, Patty responded to a fellow stripper’s invitation to go to church. “My experience at church was definitely shocking, because everybody around me was happy and joyful and just clapping. But I didn't feel that. I felt confusion. I felt like this has to be fake. This can't be real, because all around me, I grew up with nothing but dysfunction, nothing but hurt, nothing but pain .”

Her friend then showed Patti a video that mirrored her own life. “In the video, it showed a girl that was dancing and partying and drinking. And she died that day, and she went to hell. And it really spoke to me, because I was like, "Wow, that's my life. If I die, I'm going to hell." So, you know, the Bible does say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. And I feel like that day, God really showed me, like, "This is real. You need to make a decision."

Patti continues, “I started to really have a desire to know God, to read His Word, to stay in His presence, to put Him first. He just started to take people out of my life and started putting the right people in my path, the right friends.”
As she grew in her faith, Patti began to work through her past pain, writing a letter she one day hoped to give to Audi, her father’s killer. After more than 20 years, he was released from prison.

“I knew Deep inside, I had to forgive everybody that ever hurt me, said Patti. “But it wasn't until my sister found Adi on Facebook and said, "Hey, the guy that killed our father is out." I remember that day, just crying out to God and just saying, "Lord, I don't want to hold any of this, anything that's in my heart against this man." God was like, "When you talk to him, you need to show him grace. You need to show him mercy. You need to show him compassion. You need to show him that you don't just forgive him with your mouth, but with your heart." I said, "God, I need you to help me." I spent hours just there crying in the presence of the Lord.”

Patti desired to show that she had truly forgiven Audi and asked to meet him in person. Still remorseful for his actions, he silently listened as she read her letter to him.

“When I saw him face to face, I had nothing but grace and compassion towards him because I realized that we kind of had the same story. He was brought up in a home where his father beat him, and his father instilled murder inside of him. He was dealing with the same anger that I had been dealing with all of my life through my abuse. So, it made me have compassion on him.”

At the end of their meeting, she gave Audi the letter.

“It's made me realize that we truly can do all things through Christ, who gives us the power and who gives us the strength, because I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would see this man face to face. It's also shown me that my pain really did have purpose, that God was with me then, and He's with me now.”
Forgiveness given and received has set Patti free from the wounds of her past. 
Patti concludes, “It's important to forgive, and not just forgive, but to go the extra mile and to show the people that hurt you that, "Hey, I really do forgive you, and I love you in the love of Christ through the power of God."