Luis' Story

By Helen W.

Last fall, after the birth of her son, Marilyn’s parents Luis and Iris flew here from Puerto Rico for a visit. Due to her dad’s health issues, Marilyn was able to convince her dad to extend his stay another 6 weeks and receive treatment for a bone condition he had.

It was during this time that they brought him to Blazing Fire Church.

Marilyn’s dad (Luis) comes from a Catholic background, and Marilyn recalls that the night she brought him to church was different – it wasn’t the typical worship service with preaching, as much as it was a healing night. There was a guest minister who never really even preached – a man named Dave Moore - who led worship as he played the keyboard while he called out people’s medical conditions – declaring that those were the things God wanted to heal that night!

Marilyn’s dad was quite happy just to sit in the back row, but she wanted to go up for prayer. Even as she walked up, she found herself saying “I don’t even know why I’m up here.”

This is what I recall from that night: When I walked in that evening, the first person I met was Dave Moore and he asked me if I would help on his healing team. I had already been up since 4:00 AM, and it had been an exhausting day, but Dave is a personal friend of mine, and I love to pray for the sick and see God heal them, so I agreed. Even then, I had a hard time staying awake during the early part of the service, and if I hadn’t promised my friend, I might have left early… It just goes to show you - God can use anybody.

So, Dave called out a certain medical condition and people started coming forward for prayer. Somehow I missed hearing what he said so as I went up, I had to repeatedly ask people what they wanted me to be praying about. It wasn’t long until I noticed Marilyn. I didn’t know her, but it was as if God put a spotlight on her and I felt drawn to her. I made my way through the crowd and asked her if she needed prayer. She said she didn’t really need anything, so I prayed generally and blessed her.

Somewhere along the line, Dave Moore called out, “Somebody here has degenerative bone disease”. I was praying aloud and Marilyn was listening to me, but she heard Dave as well and she jumped backwards, waving her arms saying, “That’s my dad!!!”

She looked back at Luis and he had a smile on his face – which told her he was open to being prayed for – and he agreed that it was his condition that Dave had just called out. So Marilyn went to get her dad and brought him to me for prayer. I tried asking him questions re: his name or his condition, but he would not speak to me. He just stood there with a blank look on his face. His son in law Josh kept encouraging him to speak to me, but he remained silent and expressionless. So I just prayed. They probably told me what his specific diagnosis was, but to be honest with you, I was so tired I don’t think it ever registered…

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I would like to give you some background on who Luis is and what brought him to this point.

I’ve already told you Luis is the father of Marilyn, who is married to Josh. Luis and his wife Iris live in Puerto Rico and Luis is 59 years old. LUIS KNOWS PAIN. Luis was diagnosed with degenerative bone disease that was brought on by a fall when he was 21 years old, and the condition worsened as arthritis set in after that. Not only that, but after the initial event that caused his injury, he developed a balance problem and he would fall down, sometimes daily. Imagine what years of falling could do to a person’s bones…

Marilyn recalls that her dad’s condition was always like this, so to her - it was normal. As she grew older and understood his pain, she felt sorry for him. She tried to help him, but there really wasn’t much she could do. She would try to take him to the swimming pool for therapy but sometimes doing that injured him and he wouldn’t want to go back for fear of more injuries.

As his condition worsened with age (especially after he passed the age of 50), he would move wrong or lift something he shouldn’t, and suddenly he would be bedridden, sometimes up to 2 weeks at a time. Marilyn recalls hearing her father crying out in pain and moaning in agony from his bed.

Luis’s doctors insisted that he retire from work. The care for his health became an increasing burden on his wife. His bones had become brittle and the vertebrae in his neck had become so thin that the doctors were concerned that one of his falls may snap his neck and be fatal. They said they wanted to do surgery on his neck in two places – fusing the vertebrae together to make them more solid, but the by-product of this surgery would cause his neck to become totally immobile. They hoped that this would strengthen his neck so that if he were to fall, he wouldn’t break his neck.

They performed this surgery in the fall of 2007 and planned to do another one like this on his lower back approximately a year later. They fused the vertebrae together in two separate places as well as inserting a metal plate into his neck – ½” wide and 3” long. His neck would never move again.

Marilyn recalls that if Luis wanted to look at someone, he had to turn his upper body from his lower torso – because he was completely unable to do any twisting motions with his upper body. And they were going to repeat this surgery on his lower back as well, but before that happened, Luis visited his daughter and the Lord visited him!

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So here we are at Blazing Fire, October 4^th 2008 – Luis is standing in front of me and I’m praying for him. The funny thing is somehow I missed the details of his diagnosis and thought I was simply praying for someone with a stiff neck…

I don’t recall much of what I prayed, but I know I prayed for quite a while. My faith wasn’t great that night, I was praying out of obedience. I had long since determined that my percentage of healings would go up with the more people I prayed for, so I took advantage of any opportunities to pray!

Marilyn remembers that I prayed specific, detailed prayers. She said I prayed for the vertebrae in his neck to move independently. She said I prayed to give each vertebra the ability to move so Luis could once again move his neck and not be stiff. She said after a while I stopped praying and said, “Sir, can you move your neck?” Marilyn thought, “WHAT! Didn’t I tell you? His neck is FUSED! He can’t move it!” Nevertheless, she kept this to herself because she could see that her dad seemed to be believing this and she didn’t want to weaken his faith. What really amazed her was before I could finish my question, he began slightly moving his head. She thought, “I don’t know, maybe it’s just the vertebrae.”

Luis was moving his head forward and backwards ever so slightly, little by little. This whole process took about 10 or 15 minutes. I would pray more, and then Luis would move it more. I would pray more and he would move it a little bit more. The moment came when he touched his chin to his chest, tilted his head all the way back and then he looked at me. A huge, silent smile spread across his face and I knew something supernatural had just happened!

Meanwhile Marilyn thought, “WHAT!?!?! NO…this is not happening! I saw the MRIs, I saw his vertebrae - and they’re fused!”

It was physically impossible for Luis to move his neck AT ALL, much less like this. Well, once he touched his chin to his chest and leaned his head back, he started tilting his head from left to right, Marilyn started freaking out!

She remembers people asking her, “What’s going on?”

She told me later, “I saw people with ‘what’s the big deal?’” looks on their faces, and it was right about then I got the microphone and started explaining to everyone what had just happened. We took Luis up on stage for everyone to see him moving his neck and then he bent down and touched his toes! It was great! Marilyn was jumping up and down and Josh was saying in the entire time he had known Luis he had NEVER seen him do this!

I found out later that Luis is a very shy, private person. He never talks in public (which explains why he wouldn’t talk to me that night) and Josh said he wouldn’t ever talk to him in public! A week later we were back at Blazing Fire again – and Luis stood up and told his whole story while Marilyn looked on in amazement, and she said, not only was he talking in public, but he wouldn’t shut up!!!!

Immediately Luis began stepping out in faith and praying with thanksgiving to the God who healed him. As you can imagine, Luis’s wife Iris is thrilled that her husband is healed. Her husband of 31 years is no longer disabled! They now go to the gym every day and take 3-mile walks together.

I told you all the details because I wanted you to see a living example of why it’s so important that we step out in obedience and exercise our faith in praying for the sick. Someone is waiting for you to come and set them free!

After 38 years, Luis has a brand new lease on life, his daughter sees a freedom in her father that she has never seen before and Luis’s wife is now enjoying time with her husband instead of caring for him on a sick bed.

They will never be the same and neither will I because of what I experienced and witnessed firsthand that night.

In one moment of time, sickness was defeated and a life of pain was wiped away by the mighty power of God, bringing joy - and impacting generations of this family.

Helen W.