What if I had not met Nanci (all the odds were against it) and come to Jesus a year later? Since my name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, I won’t ask the question of whether I would’ve come to Jesus without meeting Nanci, but I certainly believe she was central to His plan in drawing me to Christ.

Recently I read “9 Lessons from God Concerning Sickness” from J. C. Ryle, an Anglican bishop (1816–1900). Every lesson he shares applies to how Nanci lived out her last years before relocating to Heaven. 

Last year, Operation Mobilization told me they wanted to honor Nanci's influence on the ministry by renaming the library on board Logos Hope, “The Nanci Alcorn Memorial Library.” Our daughters Karina and Angela were able to go to the dedication to witness it firsthand.

Randy and Nanci Alcorn have had a long relationship with Operation Mobilization (and their ship Logos Hope). After Nanci went to be with Jesus, OM wanted to honor her influence on the ministry by renaming the library on board Logos Hope, “The Nanci Alcorn Memorial Library.” Randy was unable to visit the ship for the dedication this October, but his daughters Karina and Angela traveled to Tanzania to witness firsthand their mom being honored by one of her favorite ministries.

It’s no exaggeration to say that other than her Creator and Redeemer, and her immediate family and closest friends, no person spoke to my wife Nanci more powerfully than Charles Spurgeon!

Nanci and I always got up early to watch Wimbledon together, as it’s a 6 a.m. start here on the Pacific coast. It was her second favorite sporting event after the Super Bowl. I cannot hear the word Wimbledon without immediately thinking of Nanci.

A year ago, I got a phone call from Operation Mobilization, an organization Nanci and I have loved for years. They asked how I felt about their naming the ship library on Logos Hope after Nanci. I was, of course, honored, and knew Nanci would be, because we absolutely loved our visit to the ship six years ago, when it was docked in Jamaica.

On March 21, I gave a 30-minute chapel message at California Baptist University. They asked me to talk about suffering and Heaven, in light of Nanci’s homegoing, so I shared about Nanci and quoted from her journal. That date I spoke was actually the one-year anniversary of the day our family of 11 gathered around her bed, and Nanci spoke powerfully into our lives. A week later, she went to be with Jesus.

In the journal she kept throughout her cancer years, Nanci wrote these reflections about the healing Jesus accomplished on the cross: “I needed, and have received in full measure, a healing from my guilt and sins. No physical healing compares to complete spiritual healing.”