The story, told through Sanford’s journals, conversations with her family and Patel’s perspective, is not a solo journey. It is as much Patel’s journey as it is Sanford’s. “She cared deeply for Kashyap,” said (PCA Minister) the Rev. Shelton Sanford, Anne’s husband. “She prayed for him, prayed for him to know Christ. It was her desire that he really come to embrace Christ as the Lord.”

It was the slightest of twinges, a brief pain in his back.

It was enough to alarm Dr. Kashyap Patel of Rock Hill. To be safe, he visited a friend who was a cardiologist. He examined Patel and told him not to worry. But on the road to Charlotte, a voice told Patel to return to Piedmont Medical Center.

He immediately turned the car around.

After arriving at Piedmont Medical Center, his colleagues took him to the heart catheterization lab to run tests, expecting not to find anything. But Patel had suffered a mild heart attack, there were blockages and immediate treatment was required.

The voice?

“God,” Patel says in retrospect four years later.

But at the time, Patel’s spirituality was an eclectic mix of religions and experiences. His beliefs were shaped by the Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim and Christian faiths and the teaching of Mohandas Gandhi.

The heart attack, and other crises in his family, made Patel ponder the frailty of life and mortality. How do people survive, Patel asked. His thoughts immediately turned to a former patient, Anne Sanford.

Sanford, who was active in several Rock Hill community organizations and at Westminster Presbyterian Church, had been referred to Patel, an oncologist, complaining of aches, pains, a low-grade fever and red spots along her legs. The symptoms were the usual signs of a flu, but could also be clues to something worse.

When Patel examined her blood, he found “large, immature and angry-looking cells.” Sanford not only had leukemia, but a very aggressive form of the disease, called ALM, or acute myeloid leukemia.

He paused before telling her, not knowing how she would react.

After hearing the news, Sanford began praying.

“Oh Lord, I thank you today for giving me this opportunity to serve you through my own suffering. I am thankful to you, Lord, once again for choosing me over someone who may not have as strong a faith and family as I do. I am truly indebted to you, my Lord, and from now on, I will be at your service always.”

“I was transfixed,” Patel said of that moment in 2005. “I was shocked at the power of her faith, her saving strength. It was an a-ha moment for me. I didn’t understand the power of faith.”

It was the beginning of a journey that Patel tells in his book, “From Raindrops to an Ocean.”

The story, told through Sanford’s journals, conversations with her family and Patel’s perspective, is not a solo journey. It is as much Patel’s journey as it is Sanford’s. “She cared deeply for Kashyap,” said the Rev. Shelton Sanford, Anne’s husband. “She prayed for him, prayed for him to know Christ. It was her desire that he really come to embrace Christ as the Lord.”

God’s servant

It was not quite the love story that Patel tells in the book. The author took a few literary liberties, said Shelton Sanford. But the love between Anne Burns and Shelton Sanford that blossomed in their hometown of Macon, Ga., endured for 37 years of marriage.

Early on, Shelton Sanford said, his wife “clearly heard the Gospel and embraced Christ. She was a servant, she served people.”

Her children never knew their mother without faith.

“If we passed an ambulance, she would pray for the person in it,” said Connie McIntyre, one of the Sanfords’ three children. “If we had a crisis, came to her tearful and upset, her first reaction was prayer.”

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