Frank Acosta had a lot on his mind, none of it good, when he pulled into a Costco store just outside Toronto on Nov. 10, 2010.
Ten days earlier, Acosta had been diagnosed with advanced throat cancer. He was facing weeks of grueling treatments and an uncertain outcome. A media broker, Acosta had made the trip to Canada to see one of his largest customers "to let them know what was going to be going on with me."
The Costco in Scarborough, Ontario, was a regular stop for him. He'd have a hot dog before getting on Highway 401 for the drive back home to Farmington Hills.
There weren't many people around when Acosta took some extra napkins and went to a table to slather his snack with the usual combination of ketchup and mustard. So he was a little surprised when a man approached and asked to sit down.
Acosta remembers the guy as bearded, about 5-foot-7, wearing a short-sleeve shirt on an unusually warm November day.
"Can I have a napkin?" the man asked.
"I gave him one," Acosta said. "It had two mustard spots on it."
"Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?" was the next question. Acosta, who describes himself as "a good Catholic," was taken aback. But after a moment he said yes, he did.
The man took out a pen and began printing words on the napkin. He handed it back to Acosta.
"Say this," he said, looking the traveler in the eye, "and you will be healed."
Acosta, who had no outward signs of his illness, glanced at the napkin and "really, because I didn't want to be rude," folded it into his pocket. The man left. Acosta drove home.
"I couldn't make sense of it," he said of the brief encounter. But he read the napkin. It was a prayer that began with "Jesus loves you ..." Acosta put it in his nightstand.
"I had seen a lawyer; I was getting my affairs in order, preparing for the worst," said Acosta, an Oklahoma native who has lived in the Detroit area since the early 1980s. "I was ready to give up everything I had just to stay alive. ..."
"I cried my guts out," he said. "I had been a good man. I didn't smoke or drink. Why was this happening to me? Why was I being punished?"
Some weeks later, ravaged by three rounds of radiation and chemotherapy and reduced to a liquid diet when he had any appetite at all, Acosta became violently ill one night, worse than ever. He took out the napkin and read it again, as he had several times during his ordeal.
"I sat on the edge of the bed and I asked the Lord to heal me," he said. Then he vomited.
"Something came up, came out, I don't know; it smelled terrible," he said. "I had my hand on the (toilet) handle, and I immediately flushed it away."
Five days later, Acosta reported as scheduled for tests and treatment at the University of Michigan hospital.
He can still hear the sweet words of Dr. Francis Worden, a medical oncologist, who examined him: "Frank, I don't think you have cancer anymore."
"Wow," he said. "That's unbelievable."
