Miraculous Healing: Meet Riyon

Meet Riyon, a participant in CGI’s byTavi program. Her story of healing is nothing short of miraculous, especially to those who saw the conditions she overcame. Whitney Vance and Angie Harris are two witnesses of Riyon’s transformation that tell the story of answered prayers.

Whitney: My heart sank when I walked into the one-room shack that byTavi employee, Riyon, called home. Just a year earlier she was sitting upright in the place that she was now lying, unmoving. I could tell that it was hard for her to take a breath, and her thin shirt followed her concave stomach every time she exhaled. Her eyes stared straight at the ceiling, unblinking. Her mother-in-law sat on the dirt floor next to her head and adjusted Riyon’s head on the pillow that was the only form of comfort in the bare room.

A little more than a year earlier, Riyon had a stroke. Due to her culture, her family encouraged her to seek healing from the equivalent of the community “witch doctor.” Now, a year later, CGI President Chris Alexander and I sat next to Riyon on the dirt floor praying for her and trying to discern if a medical doctor could do anything to help at this point.

Angie: Over the next two weeks not much change had come to Riyon’s condition. That is when my team arrived to meet her. I am a nurse by training and very accustomed to working in the high tech world of American medicine. But here, in Cambodia without a variety of tests or medications, I felt powerless. I showed her family how to help her perform exercises and deep breathing and suggested some changes to her medications. The best thing we did was lay our hands on her and pray.

In the way that He works miracles, two days later we went back to see Riyon and found her awake, alert and able to get up and walk with some assistance. I received a video about a month after I got home that showed her walking independently several yards outside her home in the alley. God truly is still in the miracle business.

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By Whitney Vance and Angie Harris