Volume 1 Letter 5                                     April 2004

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A Taste of the Love and Sacrifice of Jesus: Death to Life Experience

Words cannot adequately express what I felt as Jesus revealed Himself to me through this painful death and life experience that I will try to describe through this letter.  This whole experience was most precious!

On or about November 7, 2001, as I was meditating, suddenly I felt a sharp pain in the very center of the top of my left foot.  The pain was concentrated in one small round spot about the size of the tip of a small finger.  My thoughts turned to Jesus and nails being driven into His feet. Two evenings later the same thing happened, but this time the sharp pain was concentrated in one small round spot about the size of the tip of a small finger in the very center of the top of my left hand.  Again, my thoughts turned to Jesus being nailed to the cross.  Each time the concentrated pain lasted about five minutes, and then went away as suddenly as it began. I wondered what it was Jesus wanted me to experience.

On November 14, 2001, three of us, Thelma, Dianna and I, were together for our Wednesday morning Bible study.  Suddenly, I felt an extremely sharp piercing pain in my left side.  It was so intense I could not stay seated.  I got up from my chair and went outside to try to walk off the pain.  As I was standing in the front yard, I said to God this pain feels like I am being pierced with a spear.  My thoughts immediately turned to Jesus and His being pierced with a spear as He hung on the cross. I walked around outside for a few minutes. I just could not walk off the pain.  When I went back inside, Thelma suggested I go to the local clinic, so Dianna drove me there.   

A doctor briefly questioned me and told me to wait in an examining room.  I could not handle the piercing pain sitting down, so again I tried walking.  I walked down the hallway and went out the front door and walked outside for a few minutes. When I went back in, they were ready to check me into the local hospital.  I believe the doctor thought the problem was a kidney stone. 

For about 3½ hours the pain was extremely intense.  A nurse asked me to rank the pain on a scale of 1 to 10.  I hesitated.  I wanted to blurt out 10, because I had never before, even during childbirth, experienced such piercing pain.  But, I said 9.  I said 9 because I could not rank or compare the pain to what Jesus bore while going through the immeasurable suffering and death He willingly experienced for us. 

After the 3½ hours, I felt pressure as if I needed to have a bowel movement.  While trying to relieve the pressure, the piercing pain suddenly dispersed across my abdominal cavity.  The nurses struggled to get me back into bed.  As I looked at the blood pressure monitor, I noticed that my blood pressure had plummeted.  I remember reading 90/37.  My hemoglobin plunged too. 

The doctor ordered an ultrasound.  The results of the ultrasound seemed to indicate something in the center of my chest just below the ribcage.  I think everyone was at a loss as to what was going on.  The doctor attempted to make arrangements to have me air lifted to Abbott Northwestern Hospital, but the ceiling was too low for a helicopter to take off.  Arrangements were then made for an ambulance from Mankato to take me to Abbott Northwestern.

Upon arriving in ICU, work began to thicken my blood so that a CAT scan could be done. I was taking a blood thinner because of the previous stroke I suffered in February of 2000.  Many hours passed.  Around 10 p.m., a CAT scan with dye was finally accomplished. 

At 4 a.m. on Thursday morning, a young student doctor peaked in around the curtain and discovered I was not asleep.  It seemed as if he couldn’t wait to pronounce the news.  According to him, things looked very grim.  Preliminary results pointed to multiple masses.  He told me they were in all likelihood cancerous tumors.  The preliminary diagnosis was pancreatic cancer.  What this young doctor was announcing was my death sentence.  The doctors believed I was dying. They believed I only had two or three weeks left of earthly life.

Testimony of Dorothy von Lehe

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