“I don’t know what’s happening,” Felipe Piazza said as he thought back on the fateful night his wife, Dina, lost consciousness. “It’s like the color in her eyes went out. My brain was bombarded with, what if she dies? I love my wife very much. What am I going to do if she’s gone?”

June 2nd, 2021 – Felipe and Dina were attending an evening service at Restoring Hope Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee. This was only their second visit to the church, and while they were enjoying the worship music Dina began to feel ill. She then collapsed in Felipe’s arms.

“All of a sudden she just like, went sideways and that was it,” Felipe said. “The color in her skin went out, the color of her lips went out, like, everything went out. She wasn’t reacting at all. I’m scared. I don’t know CPR.”

But members of the church did. Nurses in the crowd rushed to Dina as Pastor Amanda Crabb was informed of the situation.  

“I didn’t have time to think,” Pastor Amanda said. “I jump off the stage, I got on the microphone and began to declare to the worshipers, ‘Go to the front lines, begin to war in the spirit. Let’s pray in faith, no doubt in this moment, we’re going to declare the life of Jesus Christ in this room.’ And so the prayers were praying, the nurses were administering, I was declaring the prophetic word of the Lord, and it was in that moment that you saw the full activation of what The Body of Christ is supposed to be.”

“When I saw how they reacted, that gave me a lot of peace,” Felipe said. “I don’t have to do anything else. Let me call 911. Pastor Amanda started declaring life over Dina. The whole church is worshiping, praying, they never stopped. We were just visiting. They didn’t know who we were at all and they still fought for her life.”

Emergency Medical Services arrived within six minutes of Filipe’s call. Paramedic Alex Smith attended to Dina.

“She didn’t have a heartbeat and she wasn’t breathing,” Alex said. “I just remember a lot of people being there and they were praying, but there was also this deep silence.”

Alex moved Dina’s lifeless body to the waiting ambulance outside. At this point, she’d been without a pulse for ten minutes. After several failed attempts to shock her heart back into rhythm, Alex gave it one more try. Miraculously, this time it worked. He updated Filipe and the congregation before taking her to the hospital – Dina was alive, but now in a coma.

“She’s not moving,” Felipe recalled. “If you knew my wife, she’s very energetic, but at that moment she’s just lying there. It was pretty rough. She means the world to me.”

It was found that Dina had a blockage in her heart that caused a cardiac arrest. A stent was inserted to open the clogged artery and she was stabilized, but the doctors said that even if Dina came out of her coma there was still the threat of long-term complications such as brain damage. They told Felipe to prepare for the worst. In the meantime, Pastor Amanda and other members of the church came to visit the Piazza’s in the hospital. For three days they fasted and prayed for Dina’s healing, then something happened.

“One of the nurses, she stopped me and she’s like, ‘She woke up.’” Felipe said. “I’m like, ‘What do you mean she woke up?’ They’re like, ‘She woke up. She’s totally awake, she’s totally conscious.’ The doctors didn’t have a clue what was happening. All the tests that they were running on her were coming back, you know, like good. I mean, this was a miracle.”

“They kept on telling me, you died, you died,” Dina said while remembering her experience waking up from the coma. “I was like, ‘God, I am so thankful.’ I was overwhelmed with joy, but at the same time I felt like, ‘Why? You picked me up from the dead?’ I was dead for so long, I could have been brain dead. A lot of doctors to this day say that they cannot believe what happened.”

Within a week she was given a clean bill of health and released from the hospital to reunite with Filipe and their son, Christian. She’s had no lingering complications since. Those who witnessed her survival give all the credit to God.

“Knowing the diagnosis she had, this was very unique,” Alex said. “Seven days later she walked out of the hospital like nothing was ever wrong – this was a miracle.”

“People prayed, we worshiped, we declared God as the center point of this whole night,” Pastor Amanda said. “It was The Body coming together, functioning according to where we had been commissioned and granted in our level of ability. By faith we saw a miracle that day.”

The Piazza’s have since officially joined Restoring Hope Church. They now boldly speak about how God can use The Church Body to do amazing things, even in the lives of complete strangers.

“I’m super grateful to God for still having my wife,” Felipe said with tears in his eyes. “It’s very emotional because it’s like you see The God of Love. I’m super grateful for what He did, but I’m also super grateful for the church. Not knowing who we were, and they still showed us that love. They took care of us like if we were part of them, as if we’d went to that Church for forever.”

“I am so thankful,” Dina said. “I am so grateful for Restoring Hope Church. They have become my family. I just glorify God. I just have to glorify God for what He did with me. That He healed me. Not only saved my life, but He completely healed me. It is important that we understand that the power of prayer, the worship, the faith, the unity of The Body together, praying for something, for a miracle, even if you do not know the person, is something that can change anything.”