A miracle happened to missionary Gene Lewton on the

Archive: Night Train to Nairobi

by Dwight Harriman
Condensed from A Call to Prayer, with permission

Gene Lewton awoke and peered through the predawn grayness of the room and wondered what he had eaten last night that would make him greet the day with such a vile stomach ache. But this was his vacation. He was determined that nothing would interrupt it. He rubbed his midriff in condolence and got out of bed.

It was 1961. Gene and Marion Lewton, with their three young children, were taking their yearly vacation on Kenya’s east coast at Mombasa. It was a favorite spot for missionaries desperately needing a temporary respite from heavy work loads, a place to “let their souls catch up with their bodies.”

For days now, the Lewtons had watched blue waves come crashing in over white sand, swum in the churning water, and marveled at resplendent sunsets. Their souls were just catching up with their bodies. …

“I think we better go to Mombasa to see a doctor,” Marion said after they had eaten a simple breakfast.

Gene was hardly one to be terribly concerned about the aches and pains of life. But since the discomfort had not let up since he’d risen, he conceded, “I’ll go.”

The doctor at Mombasa pronounced the verdict. “A simple liver infection,” he said. He reached for a darkly colored bottle. “Just take this and you’ll be all right. ”

They returned to their cottage on the beach. The pain increased throughout the day. By 3:00 that afternoon, Gene was lying on the bed in the cottage.

Then Marion remembered Dr. Barnett, a doctor with Africa Inland Mission. He was staying not far from them and she hurried to summon him.

By now Gene was feeling a pain that spread like a hot blanket over his midriff, ever tightening around his entire abdomen. He was starting to grit his teeth. Marion felt a dark anxiety growing in herself. Something was very, very wrong.

Dr. Barnett arrived, took one look at Gene and declared, “This man must get to the hospital immediately!” Nairobi was 300 miles away. The only remotely comfortable way to get there was via a train that docked in a station separated from them by 20 miles of rough roads and a strand of ocean that had to be crossed by ferry. The train was leaving in less than an hour.

“Lord, somehow help us get there on time,” Marion prayed. In the rush of the moment, a thought entered her mind. She knew she would have to find a policeman who had the authority to call the station and ask them to delay the train’s departure. Finding a policeman would be a miracle. Having the station master hold up the train would be a bigger one.

But, in one of those baffling “coincidences” of divine providence, she had no sooner stepped out the door and walked a few paces than she ran directly into a Kenyan policeman. She explained the emergency to him, and he agreed to make the call.

“They said they would try to hold the train for 15 minutes,” he said.

But now, before any more action was taken, something had to be done about Gene’s pain. It was like a sword, probing inside him, whose blade grew keener and fiercer with each passing minute. His knuckles were ivory white as they gripped the edge of the bed he lay on. He inhaled in short, quick breaths.

Dr. Barnett reached in his medical bag and pulled out a small vial containing a colorless fluid, labeled “Morphine Sulphate.” He plunged a needle into its rubber cap, drew out 1.5cc of the clear liquid, and injected Gene as quickly and carefully as possible.

“In 10 or 15 minutes the pain will go away,” he told Gene. “That will last three, maybe four, hours. After that, you’ll need these.” He handed him a bottle of 15 wide, white tablets. “Take two every three to four hours.” Little did he know that soon Gene would be in such an agony of pain he might not be alert enough to take them.

Quickly now, with a sense of each passing second, Dr. Barnett and Marion removed a mattress from the cottage, put it in the back of his station wagon, and helped Gene onto the cushion. Marion told her children to remain there until they got back and then they got into the car and headed out to catch the Nairobi-bound night coach. Marion remembered that the policeman had said they would try to hold the train. He hadn’t said they would. She prayed again. She didn’t know it, but Gene and the doctor were praying, too.

The roads to the station were everything they had expected them to be. Potholes, bumps, and curves sent giant throbs through Gene’s body as he waited for the morphine to take effect. Each jolt was a new experience in sounding the depths of pain. They careened down the road as carefully yet hastily as they could. Gene’s occasional groans and outcries became less frequent as the injected drug took its miraculous effect.

The station finally came into view. The train was still there, steam pouring impatiently from its sides. They drove up to the loading platform, and things happened in rapid succession. The conductor, who had apparently been keeping an eye out for them, hurriedly ushered them to the train. Then, amid a flurry of movement, Gene was laid out on a berth in a small compartment. Marion desperately wanted to go with him, but she knew she could not leave her small children alone in an unfamiliar cottage by the beach. She would have to go back, then get to Nairobi on her own, as soon as she could.

Fortunately, she remembered a visiting American friend who happened to be on that very train to Nairobi. Thankful for having recalled the fact, but having no time to find the lady, Marion explained the situation to the conductor.

“Have her check on him until the train reaches Nairobi,” she said. The cars began moving out of the station.

“Lord, help him to make it,” she prayed.

But Gene doubted if he would. Pain—like a knife; twisting and stabbing its way through his sides and exploding in his brain. His body rocked back and forth in grotesque crescendos with the swaying of the railroad car. The morphine had worn off.

Gene was too irrational at the time to know it, but someone else prayed for him—all night. Marion’s friend on the train had received the message about Gene, and checked on him at intervals throughout the long journey. There was nothing she could do but pray.

Somehow, during the night, he was able to remember the pills. After much staggering and slopping of water in his glass, he got them down. But what good was codeine against that excruciating torture? He longed for morphine—sweet, relieving, heavenly morphine.

He was incredulous that he could feel such convulsive pain and still live. He had never known such fierce agony in his life. Was there no limit? Was there no end to it?

Dr. Barnett ·had called ahead so an ambulance was waiting to pick Gene up at the Nairobi station. It was an army truck ambulance which, if it had springs at all, were certainly the firmest set of springs any vehicle ever possessed. As it wheeled Gene from the station to the downtown Nairobi hospital that morning, the bouncing was one last terrifying experience which he was to be years in forgetting. After 14 hours on the train he was only half coherent, but aware that he was off the train and probably headed for the gleaming, modern, Nairobi hospital. With doctors and nurses. And morphine. Maybe they would give him morphine. …

But they gave him ether instead, and after that he didn’t feel anything. …

“My appendix had burst,” Gene explained weakly to Marion as she stood by his hospital bed. “The doctors said it had probably been that way for three or four days before I got to the hospital.”

Most men would scarcely have been alive under Gene’s circumstances. But medically speaking, a very unusual thing had happened. After Gene’s appendix burst, a protective sac had formed around the poisonous fluid, sealing it off from spreading totally through the rest of his body. Gangrene had already begun to set in, but the unusual sac had been enough to help keep him alive until he reached the hospital and the operating table.

“It’s a miracle I’m alive,” Gene said. Marion smiled. Miracles had a way of happening when they prayed.