Healing in Hurricane

Iowa native, Suzette “Zet” Mackert, was working at a local hospital when a debilitating pain began to take over her left shoulder and arm. However, it wasn’t medicine that would bring about her healing, it was a literal step of faith.

Mackert was raised in the church but fell away from the Lord when she was 18 years old. Yet 30 years later, at the persistent requests of her two young children, she returned to church.

Mackert’s mother had been taking her children to New Life Hurricane, a small Assembly of God church in Hurricane, Utah.

Its co-pastors, Timothy and Cindy Dudley, both ordained ministers with the AG, had left their California home of 20 years to raise their family in Utah. After becoming staff members of the St. George, Utah, New Life Christian Center, they felt the Lord calling them to plant a church in Hurricane in 2017.

In 2020, Mackert, now 46, walked through the doors and knew that she had found her new church home.

“I had been through a lot of stuff,” she says, “but I immediately connected.”

Within a matter of months, Mackert had rededicated her life to the Lord and began to seek out a way to be more involved. She soon found her niche and joined the praise and worship team as the drummer, a position she filled for three years before transitioning to the children and youth leader in January of 2024.

In early 2023, Mackert began to experience pain in her left shoulder. Over several months, the pain gradually increased and left her unable to move parts of her arm. As it worsened, doctors could not determine the cause of the pain. Even after an inconclusive MRI, Mackert found herself with limited mobility from the elbow down, at times even experiencing numbness.

Through the pain, she continued to serve as best she could as the church’s drummer. Yet after six months of constant pain, Mackert was not sure how she was going to continue to play.

Then, one Sunday in June of that year, Dudley, 62, felt the Holy Spirit prompting her to call for a time of prayer for healing at the altar. During the fourth song of the worship team’s set, Dudley asked for anyone needing prayer, specifically healing, to come forward.

“I was preaching a message that asked the question, ‘Do you want to be healed,’” she says. “In John chapter 5, Jesus asks a man if he wants to be healed. He doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want to heal the man, he asks because he wants the man to respond.”

Prompted by her coming message, Dudley asked people to come forward as an act of response to what she felt the Lord wanted to do.

“Pastor Dudley has called for a time of prayer for healing a few times before, and I knew God wanted to heal me, but I had never stepped out of my place with the worship team to come down for healing,” says Mackert.

But when Dudley asked, specifically, if people wanted to be healed, Mackert felt that God was speaking directly to her through her pastor.

“That’s when I knew it was time,” she says, “so I came out and went down for prayer.”

As the congregation entered into a time of prayer, Dudley anointed those who had come forward and laid her hands on them as she prayed, a practice she feels led to do when interceding for healing.

As she placed her hands on Mackert’s left shoulder, Mackert felt the Holy Spirit telling her to “get ready.”

“I didn’t really know what that meant but I kind of braced myself. Then I literally felt the hand of God take my shoulder and set it back into place.”

As she felt her shoulder reset, a miraculous and instantaneous movement that Dudley states she felt happen, the entire congregation heard a loud pop. Everyone stopped at the sound.

Mackert looked up and realized that the pop had come from her arm and that every bit of pain had left her shoulder.

“All of a sudden I could move my arm, all the feeling returned, and all the pain was gone,” she states.

One member of the church, Victoria, who was seated in the back of the sanctuary, recalls her astonishment at the sound of Mackert’s shoulder.

“I heard the pop and knew it was a God thing,” she says. “It was amazing.”

As the congregation realized what had just taken place and Mackert began to testify to her healing, the entire church erupted into a time of praise and thanksgiving.

“When I went back to work the next day, everyone was in awe of God’s healing in my shoulder,” Mackert says. “I was able to share about God that day with all of my co-workers.”

Since the day of her healing, Mackert states that the pain has not returned and that she is able to sleep on her arm again, as well as participate in other activities that had become limited.