Everything had turned gray since the cancer came home. His wife had not the slightest resemblance to the old portrait photo marriage hanging over one of the bedroom walls. Now it was just a cadaverous face, snow-white, colorless and below the normal weight of any mortal. “You’re a grown lady,” the doctor had said, “… go home and wait.” Man, temperamental and rough hands, he knew what he had to wait for the inevitable. What would snatch his wife and mother of his four children. Without mercy, without giving few more years of grace.
The putrid breath of death seemed to fill the atmosphere with each passing day. The drink was as anesthesia for the old carpenter. At least for a few hours was not forced to think. By the time duration of the binge, have an interval in the middle of a life that gave him no respite. There was any alcohol spread throughout the house; in cupboards, refrigerator, garage, shed and even a bottle in the sawdust of an old and rusty barrel. This was his birthday, man celebrating a year of life and one year less with his wife.
The wail of his wife awoke from slumber. “Remember,” the woman, “today we are invited to go to that church,” she said softly. The man made a gesture of disgust, he had been Lutheran since childhood and for years that was not above a church. Just I remember some religious songs in German that were intoned in his hometown. But the request of his wife was not an option, it was a desperate plea. Perhaps the last wish of those who grapples with stubbornly tumor invade everything. A last attempt to approach God before leaving forever. Carpenter’s rough hands and drunken breath, nodded.
The church was not very close, but when the cancer is installed in a home, nobody cares about the time and distance. Nobody sleeps in the carpenter’s house. That night, the night of birthdays, marriage came with her two young children to the remote church in a town called Del Viso, in the vast Buenos Aires. Those who saw them , say he leaned against the wall and heard the sermon. “Linda way to celebrate the birthday ” I would have thought wryly. But he went there with some respect, watching as his wife wept before the altar. Hardly heard the message, but felt that was to accompany his wife and, slowly, the man who hid bottles of alcohol in the sawdust, came forward.
The two made a decision. They accepted Christ as their only Savior. A simple decision not seem too historical. But to them, they changed my life forever. She watched the cancer receded gradually to transform miraculously only a bad memory. The man got rid of all the bottles of alcohol and never retook.
What started as a bad day ended with a decision that affected the future forever. The old carpenter went to his barn and raised his fist to the sky. He is now determined to make a radical and categorical determination. That’s not any fist raised in a dilapidated barn, is fist champion. It will never again drink. It is a promise. A decision. It happened a May 1975.
Carpenter’s rough hands never have imagined that because of that determination, not only affect his family, but thousands of people around the world. His younger son, Dante Gebel, who at that time was just seven years, now preaches to hundreds of people in most of the world to bring you inner peace and want to enjoy their lives.
