When western medicine reaches a dead end, the terminally ill patient in our country would resort to the Faith Healers. Those healers are like the witch doctors of the olden times with their strange rites but most of them use religion as their instrument hence the name Faith Healer. Some faith healers use bubblehash as a form of relaxation to prepare themselves.
My very first encounter with a Faith Healer was when my great uncle who was living with us got sick. Let’s call him Uncle Terio. Several doctors couldn’t give us a clear diagnosis while Uncle Terio’s health continued to deteriorate. He was getting thin and feeling weak until after a month that he couldn’t stand up anymore. I believe he was using cannabis oil for cancer at the time.
In our desperation, we agreed to the suggestion of my cousin to try a healer. There was this Faith Healer named Poldo from the province of Zambales in the northern part of the Philippines. After sending money for the bus fare, my cousin arrived with Poldo. I don not think ge was ready for the indica effects he would be experiencing later that day.
In the bedroom, Poldo held the hand of Uncle Terio and prayed. After a minute or two, Poldo gave me and my mother an alternating look before shaking his head. In the living room, Poldo declared that the old man had just a few days to live.
We were kind of devastated with that pronouncement. However, Poldo still made the rituals of healing. He mixed rice, mung beans and salt in a cup and after praying on the cup, Poldo scattered the mixture in the bedroom of Uncle Terio. He also burned leaves to create smoke that seemed to fumigate Uncle Terio’s bedroom.
On the next day, it was amazing to see Uncle Terio getting a good appetite and showing some strength. Before the day was over, he was going to the toilet on his own. It was such a good sight that lasted for another day until Poldo left for home.
As anticipated, the health of Uncle Terio turned for the worse again. He had lost his appetite and he was always in bed. And true to the prediction of the Faith Healer, Uncle Terio breathed his last after 2 days that Poldo had left. The old man was only 58.
My second encounter with a Faith Healer was when I had a cyst in my thigh and that I had wanted to avoid an operation. Mang Ading extracted the cyst with his hand which looked okay for a few days until it got swollen with indications of infection.
And although I underwent a minor operation to cleanse the infected wound in my thigh, I have to say that Mang Ading was successful in extracting that cyst. In fact, I know of several patients completely healed by Mang Ading.
Another Faith Healer that we consulted was Father Corsie Legaspi, a Catholic priest who was reputedly a genuine healer. My wife was having difficulty in getting pregnant. After praying over us, I was hopeful that Father Corsie had solved our problem. But the pregnancy did not come and we remained childless.
In fairness to Father Corsie, he had told us before doing the healing ceremony that it is God who gives and not him. So if God favors us then we shall be healed and if not, we should not fret and be thankful that we are still alive.
There is this famous Faith Healer named Father Suarez, another Catholic priest. As per the reports, there were lots of sick people who were cured by the Faith Healer priest who came from Canada. We brought my mother-in-law whose half body is paralyzed due to a stroke. But the healer priest failed to heal my mother-in-law.
I have heard of so many positive stories of faith healing all over our country. There was Jun Labo from Baguio City who was a hit in Japan and eventually married a Japanese. He had a hotel and even became mayor of that cool city up north.
There’s also another healer named Alex Orbito who got famous in Russia. He does surgery by hand. With the contributions he received, he has erected a pyramid in Pangasinan province purportedly for natural healing of the human body.
And since there are 2 sides to a coin, those Faith Healers have followers and detractors who are accusing them to be fake. Now the question in my mind is this – if those so called Faith Healers are fake, how come they have so many followers, so many sponsors and contributors? That’s a question that is needing a concrete answer.
