April 24, 1995
The elephant cow and her calf had strayed a long ways from the herd’s territory.
They raided the village gardens, but no one wanted to tackle a mother elephant with her calf. The villagers knew that the cow would viciously attack any person threatening her calf. Everyone waited for them to return to their herd.”
Thus, Dr. Gordon Jones, begins a tale from his 25 years as a surgeon missionary in Zambia. (He is originally from our church.)
“Although everyone avoided the out-of-place elephants, a once-active member in the local church met the cow and calf while hunting. Momma elephant stretched out with her trunk, curled it around the man and threw him against a tree. She walked away without the usual repeated onslaughts. Alone, badly hurt, barely alive, he laid beside the trail for two days before his friends found him and took him to the hospital.”
At the hospital, the Dr. Jones X-rayed, set broken bones and treated the bruises and cuts from the elephant’s slapping him against the tree.
The nurses cleaned him up, monitored his vital signs, and the IVs used to replenish the loss of water during the time he lay helplessly beside the trail. Everyone was astounded that he had survived the attack of an elephant cow.
The next morning the man exhibited some symptoms of internal bleeding from an unknown source.
During exploratory surgery, Dr. Jones discovered that the spleen had split in half and resealed itself without the excessive bleeding normally associated with even minimal damage to the spleen.
Afterward, Dr. Jones told him, “If for no other reason, you should have died of internal bleeding from the damage to spleen.”
The man replied, “I was not living for God. I know God sent that elephant to catch my attention and bring me back to him, just like He prepared the great fish for Jonah.”
The story of the man’s miraculous escape from certain death at the trunk of the mother elephant (which was still in the area) spread through the small hospital with its open wards. In telling the story years later, Dr. Jones says, “when I visited the men’s ward later that day, I looked around at the other men in their beds and shook my head in mock dismay, ‘Now listen, if any of the rest of you men are out of fellowship with God, tell me. ‘Cause if this man is right – that the elephant was sent to get him straightened out – we don’t need those elephants coming to this hospital.”‘ If laughter is good medicine, the men’s ward had a healthy dose that day.
The injured man spent the next year of so recovering from the damage done to his body. “But,” Dr. Jones says, “in the years since he returned home he has remained faithful in his fellowship in the church and worship.”
Dr. Jones concludes with a smile, “After I told that story in an American church, the pastor stood and closed the service with prayer that began, ‘Lord, send us a few elephants. We could use them.’”