Mystery Doctor Saves Baby’s Life in Mexico

The doctor told the parents, “You should pray to your God because only a miracle can save your son.”

By Andrew McChesney, Adventist Mission

The Mexican father of five didn’t know when he had been more worried. His newborn son, Abel, was not holding down any food. He was wasting away.

After a series of tests, doctors determined that the baby boy had been born with a deformed stomach. He simply could not process food. The 15-day-old child was rushed for emergency surgery at the government hospital in Villahermosa, capital of Mexico’s southern Tabasco state.

“We were very worried about him,” said the father, Pedro Geronimo Montero, a lawyer.

At the government hospital, the doctor solemnly asked Pedro and his wife whether they were Christians. Pedro and his wife nodded their heads. The couple had joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church four years earlier after Pedro had stumbled across the Spanish-language Hope Channel radio station. Listening to the Adventist broadcasts, Pedro had grown convicted that he was hearing biblical truth about the seventh-day Sabbath. He and his wife had taken Bible studies and been baptized.

“Yes, we are Christians,” Pedro told the doctor.

“Good,” the doctor said. “You should pray to your God because only a miracle can save your son.”

The doctor scheduled the surgery for the next day. The parents prayed. They prayed all night.

In the morning, the doctor called over the parents as he was about to take their son into the operating room. He cautioned that the surgery would be delicate.

“If I cut out too much, the boy will die,” he said. “If I don’t cut enough, the boy won’t be able to digest food and he will die.”

Then the boy went into surgery. The parents prayed as they waited.

Several hours later, the doctor emerged from the operating room and declared the surgery a success. Everything was fixed with the boy’s stomach, he said.

“But,” the doctor told the father, “don’t allow any other doctor to take out the stitches. Only me.”

Two days passed. They baby was recovering well. The nurses began to wonder who would remove the stitches. Finally, they prepared to remove the stitches themselves, but Pedro stopped them.

“I’m waiting for the doctor,” the father said. “The doctor said that no one else should remove the stitches.”

The nurses asked for the name of the doctor. When the father identified the man as Dr. Daniel Hernandez, the nurses gasped. They said a leading pediatrician named Daniel Hernandez once worked at the hospital, but he had moved to a faraway city two months earlier.

“We don’t have anyone named Daniel Hernandez working at this hospital,” a nurse said.

Pedro and his wife became excited.

“Then who did this surgery on my son?” Pedro asked. “It must have been the Lord!”

Pedro’s wife began to weep with joy.

“We realized that this was a miracle of God,” Pedro said in an interview with Adventist Mission.

In the end, a nurse had to remove the stitches. The baby made a full recovery.

Pedro did his best to find the doctor named Daniel Hernandez after the operation in September 2010. He wanted to thank him for saving his son’s life. But he never found him.

Today his son Abel is 6 years old and healthy.

Pedro, 50, said the experience made him determined to share his faith with anyone who will listen. In his job as a lawyer, he encourages estranged married clients who are considering divorce to pray and read the Bible together. As a result, several couples have been baptized.

Pedro also gives Bible studies. Seven people have been baptized through the studies, and another 11 are currently preparing for baptism.

In addition, Pedro has founded three Adventist churches in southern Mexico.

These days, Pedro is praying that his 102-year-old mother will be baptized. He is certain that the same Lord who intervened to save the life of his baby son will surely recreate the heart of his elderly mother.

A portion of the Thirteen Sabbath Offering in first quarter 2018 will go toward the construction of a Seventh-day Adventist hospital in Mexico’s Tabasco state, where Pedro lives. The seven-story hospital — which will serve as a cross-culture mission center of influence — will include emergency rooms, surgery rooms, therapy rooms, and hospitalization rooms.