Testimony of Healing October 3, 1983 Issue

My parents were devoted Christian Scientists...

ZENTA KAMPARS

My parents were devoted Christian Scientists, and I began attending Sunday School at age three. I was the youngest of six children and witnessed many healings in our family. So-called childhood diseases, a knife wound to my brother's eye, colds, cuts, and bruises were all healed through reliance on God in Christian Science. Once, during a mishap, a workhorse stepped on my brother's chest. The shock rendered him unconscious. My father picked up my brother and carried him into the house. Through my parents' prayer, he quickly revived, and he never suffered any ill effects.

When our European country was invaded and taken over during World War II, the Christian Science Society my parents belonged to was closed. However, my parents remained earnest students of Science. Later in the war we were evacuated to another country. During the journey there, in an army transport ship, we were confined far below the deck. Where we were, there was only one life vest for every two passengers. At one point an alarm sounded, indicating the presence of enemy submarines. Our engines stopped, and the ship lay silent. My one-year-old daughter was in my arms, and my parents were beside me. As we sat there, I recalled a little prayer I'd learned in the Christian Science Sunday School I'd attended. It gave me assurance of God's protecting love. Many on our ship were praying as well, I'm sure—including my parents. We prayed not only for our safety but for everyone's— on our ship and in the submarines. In about an hour the engines started again; we continued on without further trouble.

Once we arrived at our destination we were housed in various camps that were incredibly crowded. At one camp, food was so scarce that many babies expired. When my daughter became very weak, my mother wrote a letter to her Christian Science teacher for me, asking her to pray for the child. (My mother had not been in touch with her teacher for several years because of the war.) She handed the letter through the fence to a passer-by. In three days her teacher came to see us. Afterward we felt that God's highway had opened up for us. Soon, most unexpectedly, some friends sent us the necessary documents for release from this camp, and two days before Christmas, we were settled in a small farming village. The people there were most kind. We remained in this village until the end of the war, and the whole time we lived there we were never hungry. We ate all the potatoes we wanted. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need."

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