A retired widow missionary shared important lessons about faith and suffering through the death of her husband and 11-year-old daughter in a supposed happy celebration in Mexico.
In a recent article, The Alabama Baptist featured Grace Sloan-Castellanos' story which was full of life lessons about faith and suffering. In June 1999, the Castellanos family together with other International Board Missionaries spent a day celebrating the birthday of her second-eldest child on a beach in Mexico. The supposedly happy celebration brought much pain and distress to her.
She had lost her husband, Edwin Castellanos, and her 11-year-old daughter in a riptide that day. Two of the missionaries with them also drowned on the coast of southern Mexico. "For me, it was a multiple grieving process," said Sloan-Castellanos who not only grieved for her husband and daughter but also for the life of two young missionaries, whose parents entrusted them to her care.
That moment led her to compassion for other people. "There were a lot of people gathering around us. I had not noticed that until I raised my head and lifted my eyes and saw us surrounded, and at that moment, it was that compassion that Jesus felt when He saw the multitudes lost without a shepherd. It just moved me," Sloan-Castellanos recounted. "I felt such a great compassion for the people around me because even though my loved ones were dead, lying there right in front of me, I knew exactly where they were."
As she felt the presence of God, she prayed to God to help her be a good witness. She remembered telling the people around her at that moment, "We got up this morning so happy, wanting to celebrate a birthday. But here we are. We had a great tragedy today. But you know, that's what the Bible says. Our lives are so fragile. It's like this mist that rises in the morning, and all of a sudden, it's gone."
"So, we didn't get up this morning expecting to have a death. But here we are. But I know that [they] gave their lives to Jesus. They're in the presence of their Lord and Savior." Even so, she was compelled to share the gospel. "I'm sure you got up this morning not wanting to have a tragedy in your life, but we don't know what's going to happen,'" Sloan-Castellanos told the group. "What if you were the ones laying on the sand and not them? Where would your soul be?"
The next day people came from all over to ask questions about Jesus as they couldn't forget the words from the bereaved woman. "People started coming to know Christ. I didn't make an invitation, but everybody else did. And there's a church there that wasn't there because all these people started coming to know Christ."
Grace Thornton, a journalist who shared Sloan-Castellano's over her articles and podcast, reiterated Elizabeth Elliot's words, "Suffering is never for nothing." Sloan-Castellanos' response to the accident led many people to believe in Christ and to plant churches in the area.
