One of the challenges for his team treating the coronavirus patients, he said, was having to deal with the way the virus devastated the ones who didn’t survive, who were mostly older adults.

“This disease is a terrible disease. It really devastates people but it does it in a way that’s very sudden. So someone can be doing well for a day or two and then all of a sudden just go downhill so fast. They can become so short of breath or as Mount Sinai discovered later they can start having things like blood clots that form that go to their lungs rapidly,” he explained.

“We had cases like that that we had to treat but we got to know these patients. We knew them. We cared for them. So when they started doing poorly, it hit the staff hard.’”

During those hard times, Tenpenny said, the staff prayed and supported each other and began ringing a bell every time a patient was successfully discharged as a symbol of hope.

“We sustained ourselves through prayer. We sustained ourselves through supporting each other and sustained ourselves just through the hope of each one of those patients leaving. So that’s one of the reasons we starting having a bit of a ceremony — clapping, ringing of a bell — whenever a patient was discharged,” he said. “The patients were excited for themselves going home but one of the main reasons was encouragement to the community around us but also to our own staff that there is hope. People do get better. They are going home. They are surviving.”

And among the survivors are stories of the “miraculous.”

“We saw a lot of really miraculous things happen with patients getting better when they shouldn’t have,” Tenpenny said. “And it was really amazing to watch.”

He had high praise for the City of New York, which he said impressed him with their “grit.”

“I really think that the biggest thing that was impressed upon us by the city in general was just the welcoming nature. Speaking personally here, I saw a lot of the sort of grit and ability of the city to rally around itself and to help everyone around that happened during that event,” he said.

“I heard many people say the last time there was an event that threatened the city as much as this was 9/11. And I’m seeing the same spirit come out to help New Yorkers, to get New York back on its feet and that was the constant attitude that was shared with us,” he noted.

As Tenpenny and his team wrap up their work in New York City, he said the biggest lesson he has come to appreciate is that “everybody has needs.”

“The biggest lesson I learned is that no matter who we are anywhere in the world, everybody has needs and God allows us at times to minister to people — in Congo with Ebola and Iraq and war experiences and also right here in New York City, one of the most modern cities in the world,” he said. “None of us are over and above our need for God’s presence and His healing hand and I just count it as a privilege to have been able to be a part of a team that provided that for a very small period of time and look forward to where God leads us in the future.”

(Used with permission from The Christian Post. Article by Leonardo Blair.)