Gary Fallesen / Friday, September 30, 2011 / Categories: Haiti, Mission: Haiti 2011, Mission Moments Friday, Sept. 30 It was a “double birthday” celebration for Gilbert on Thursday. He turned 18 and it has been four years since his “resurrection” (as missionary Miguel calls it) from the death bed. Gilbert (in missionary Miguel's house) with support money he receives each month from Climbing For Christ through a generous donation by Ron and Marsha Hogan of Golden, CO, USA. Gilbert’s story is well documented on many pages on this Web site: How he fell and severely broke his leg while playing with a friend in the ravines around the mountain village of Gentilhomme. How he suffered for 27 days because there was no medical care nearby and his parents did not know what to do. How his father had dug his grave and, indeed, would have placed his son in it possibly within three days when Miguel followed his nose to the Lindor home on the slopes of Mon Boucar (Mountain of Fire). Miguel was able to smell Gilbert’s leg from afar because gangrene had set in and the limb was rotting. But God stepped in that day in August 2007 and rescued Gilbert from the clutches of death. He used us to evacuate Gilbert and take him to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, where he lost his leg but had his life restored. “As the Bible says, one sows the seed, others clean the seeds, but the One who makes the seed give harvest is God,” Miguel said on Gilbert’s birthday. “I sow the seed, Climbing For Christ cleans the seeds, and God saved Gilbert through us.” In 2009, Climbing For Christ brought Gilbert to America. He was given a prosthetic leg by Joe Johnson's Quorum Orthopedics office in Windsor, Colo. Although the terrain where he lives has made the use of this prosthetic problematic, he has recently expressed an interest in again using the leg. On July 24, 2010, Gilbert was baptized in the Dominican border town of Jimani, where he lives with Miguel in the Haitian community that crowds a hillside there. A life that had been saved was rededicated to the One who loves. Earlier this year, I told Gilbert: “He who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). Wednesday, Sept. 28 Survey says harvest is plentiful in Peru (Tuesday, Oct. 4) Print 3947 Gary FallesenGary Fallesen Other posts by Gary Fallesen Contact author