Chad Stendal Home with the Lord

Chad went to be with the Lord on March 1.  We buried him up on the mountain on land owned by the Kogi Christians.  His passing was very gentle.  He fell on Feb 17 and shattered his left leg.  They made him lie in the hospital 8 days because he had taken aspirin, and he went downhill a little every day.  After the surgery on Feb. 25, he hardly spoke.  He recognized Kaleb who arrived while he was in surgery.  He hardly said anything, except he called for me a lot the first night.  I went to him, but then he didn’t say anything.  I was so worn out in the morning, I thought I was going to die.  That is the only night I stayed all night.

Someone was with him around the clock, and usually two people.  The next two days, he seemed to know us, but the last two, he was unresponsive.  He had a radiance in his face that increased.  He looked like he was already seeing glorious things.  He never did open his eyes again, but his breathing just got slower and slower until it stopped.  I didn’t let them resuscitate him.  As he passed, Kaleb and I prayed in English, then Amanda in Spanish and Alberto, a Kogi Christian, in Kogi.  As soon as his spirit was gone, the glory departed, and within an hour his earthly body was just a cold, grey, corpse.  I didn’t want to look again.

Alberto called friends, and soon the hospital room filled with Kogis.  They started planning the burial at once.  I found out they had been praying for a year that he would come back to Santa Marta so that they could bury him up on their land.  He was buried as a Kogi mama (spiritual leader). We will put up a tombstone saying in Spanish and Kogi that he was the first missionary to bring the Word of God to the Kogi Indians.