When Ron Sumners’ heart stopped beating on a recent missions trip to Bolivia, he never doubted that God was in total control.
“I was very close to dead — I guess I was dead for a while,” Sumners said. “But there’s definite power in prayer, and there were literally people all over the world praying for me. You realize in that situation that God is sufficient.”
Sumners, pastor of Meadow Brook Baptist Church, Birmingham, had been in the South American nation with a sister Shelby Baptist Association church for five days when he contracted a virus and went downhill fast.
“Monterro is not a large town by any means … and the doctor there did what he thought was best,” said Sumners’ wife, Prissy. “He gave him an antibiotic that was not the right medicine, and it caused his potassium level to climb really high.”
That caused Sumners’ kidneys to fail, and the doctor sent him by ambulance to a larger city, Santa Cruz. As soon as he entered the emergency room, his heart stopped beating.
“They coded him, shocked him twice with the paddles, worked on him for quite awhile and put him in ICU,” Prissy Sumners said.
It wasn’t until the next morning that she found out her husband was “very sick” through an e-mail received at Meadow Brook Baptist. After a day of struggling to get more information, she left the next day — Nov. 17 — bound for Bolivia.
“It was by the grace of God that he ended up in a private clinic in Santa Cruz, one with good doctors who took good care of him,” she said.
It would be two more weeks of scares — in one particular instance, Ron Sumners’ lungs filled with fluid and they nearly lost him again — before the couple would board a plane for 18 hours of travel. Though the team continued their door-to-door work and left Nov. 16 as planned, one team member stayed behind with him for an extra week, and a local pastor cared for both the Sumners until they came back.
22 pounds lighter than when he left.
“It was a good way to lose weight, but I wouldn’t want to do it again,” Ron Sumners joked.
After a few days at Brookwood Medical Center in Birmingham, he’s back at home and recovering well, Prissy Sumners said. “He’s got a doctor’s appointment [soon] to see if there was any heart damage, and he’s still having difficulty getting around but he’s much better. He’s just glad to be home.” (TAB)
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