Tim

I wasn’t always a believer. I was raised in a Catholic family, but by August of 1980, when I found myself in the hospital after a serious motorcycle accident, I had already fallen away from faith for a long time. I would spend over 23 days recovering in that hospital; after taking a 25mph turn at over twice that speed, I lost control of the motorcycle and was dragged along a chain-linked fence for over 50 yards, retaining several injuries in the process. I suffered a compound fracture, a punctured lung, shattered my collarbone, my kneecap, and my leg. But the real miracle was that I had not a single head injury, not even a minor one – and I hadn’t been riding with a helmet on. Even the highway patrol said I shouldn’t have lived through that accident, at least not without some major head injuries or trauma. I knew then that God had given me a second chance at life, and after being released from the hospital in September of 1980, I gave my life to Jesus Christ.

About six years later, I met my wife, Sherry. We went on to have five wonderful kids. It’s all been an incredible journey, but I’ll fast forward a little bit to February of 2009, when I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Even if you’re a believer, if you’re honest with yourself, a lot of emotions go through your heart when that hits you.

Fear sets in, and you find yourself asking how this could have happened or what you’re going to do.

Of course, my doctor recommended immediate surgery, and both my brother and brother-in-law had come out the other end of prostate cancer and kept telling me I needed to just get it out, but something inside me didn’t feel totally comfortable going that route. I wanted to go home and pray and talk it over.

The next day, I took a long walk on the beach, asking God if I was going to die. I often used my walks on the beach to communicate with the Lord, and that afternoon, He spoke to me. He directed me to a scripture in Jeremiah 30:17, and at the time I didn’t know what the scripture said, but I raced home to open up my Bible. When I read the words, I fell to the floor and cried: “For I will restore you to health, and I will heal all your wounds.” I knew that if I honored my body with what I put into it and how I took care of it, God would take care of me. I decided to hold off on the surgery, and started looking for treatment methods that would build up the body instead of damaging it. A friend of mine recommended that I look into the cancer care method known as Gerson therapy, so I started doing some more research, making juices, and participating in some other alternative at-home treatments. In about three months, my Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) levels dropped from 4.2 down to 3.6, but I was still feeling so much pressure from my side of the family and a little bit of fear had started to settle in.

I ended up having surgery to remove my prostate on June 2nd, 2009. After the initial operation, my PSA levels were checked and I got the first “all-clear”, but when I re-tested three months later, my PSA levels were at .25. With my prostate removed, I shouldn’t have been displaying any PSA at all. This meant there were still cancer cells in my prostate, or maybe even my blood. The surgery was unsuccessful. The doctors recommended radiation but I immediately refused. I gave the doctors and conventional medicine a chance; they performed their surgery and it didn’t work. I had disobeyed God and walked in a place of fear instead of trusting in His work, and I wouldn’t make that same mistake twice.

So, I went back to alternative therapy.

Eventually, Sherry and I visited the Gerson clinic in Mexico to learn the depth of their program. The therapy was very intense, and required a lot of manual labor to prepare all of the meals, juices, and enemas. Both of us were still working our normal jobs throughout all of this, but we managed to continue Gerson therapy for nearly a year and a half before it became too much. We started praying again, asking God if there was something else we could do, and soon enough we came across the Truth About Cancer website. Through that site, we found Dr. Tony at Hope for Cancer Treatment Centers, and paid our first visit to the center in April 2010. As we approached the front doors of the center for the first time, I noticed a sign that read, “Rapha Clinic.” As Christians will know, the Bible says Jehovah Rapha is the Lord our Healer. I looked at Sherry and knew right then that we were in the right place.

We started working with Hope for Cancer and had been doing therapies with them for a few years when late last May I began to feel some pain in my lower extremities and groin. An ultrasound biopsy found two cancerous tumors on my neck, and because of the growing pain, even Dr. Tony at Hope for Cancer recommended I go ahead and get some scans done. One PET scan and one MRI later, I learned that my PSA levels had steadily been climbing, I had two new tumors in my prostate bed, and bone lesions in both my sacrum area and on my femur. About the same time that my re-diagnosis came, Sherry and I lost our best friend’s 8-year-old granddaughter to brain cancer, and Sherry’s brother-in-law to kidney cancer. We still loved and believed in Jesus, but our foundation was a little shaken.

Since things seemed to be taking a turn for the worse, Dr. Tony recommended that I come to the center for a three-week visit so we could really tackle this head-on. As I made my way to Hope for Cancer in August of 2016,

God told me this visit was not about me, but about carrying His presence into the center.

He told me to shine forth His love and change the atmosphere, so as Sherry and I arrived, we began pouring into peoples lives. I began ministering to people in the center, and we quickly began to see God move in incredible ways. Understanding what other people were going through was an experience that softened my heart. Jesus filled me with a loving compassion like never before, allowing me to see people as he would see them.

One Sunday morning, I performed a service at the center, preaching a message about the faith, hope, and love of Christ. Afterwards, a woman came up to me, asking me to go upstairs and see her husband, who hadn’t been able to attend the service because he was dying. The doctors were ready to take him off the breathing apparatus that was keeping him alive and were saying their goodbyes, but his wife didn’t believe it was his time, so she came and got me. As I walked into her husband’s room and saw him for the first time, I couldn’t help turning away. There were tumors sticking out from his skin, all over his body. Faced with this, the Lord reminded me that He is the healer, not me. He told me to speak just one word, over and over again: Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. All I had to do was believe in His healing power. As I spoke, the man eventually began to move and pointed to his breathing tube, signaling that he wanted it taken from his mouth. He began to breathe on his own, and two hours later asked for some liquids to drink. I left that night and returned the next morning to find him sitting up, eating breakfast. It was truly a miracle.

Things exploded from that point at the treatment center. It was an incredibly transformative experience for both Sherry and I, one that brought us to a place of great intimacy with God. This journey has been difficult at times, but I’ve always felt His presence, even in the midst of the storm. I held onto His word through the good and the bad, fighting the spiritual battle alongside the physical one. As far as today, I truly feel that I am being restored, inside and out. My faith in God has brought me through this and made me stronger, and I’d encourage anyone going through a similar experience to continue to fight; continue to live. I am a living hope that you can also overcome. I am hope for cancer.