The Nature of Belief

A couple days ago, Mary, the landlords' maid returned. Her room is next to ours. Several nights earlier we'd heard her crying loudly, shouting her sadness. Mary had just heard that her sister died.
After she'd been crying for 40 minutes or so, the landlady came over and took Mary to her house for the night; we could no longer hear her crying. Mary spent the night there then left early the next morning on the long bus ride to her hometown - - - Mbale - - - and her sister's funeral.
This afternoon, Henry, the landlady's son, came by to see if we wanted him to get us eggs from his friend's chickens. We gave him 10 shillings for a flat of eggs, and asked him if Mary was okay. "What did her sister die of?" N asked.
"Oh," Henry said. "She didn't die. She's fine. What happened was that she got very sick and the family took her to the hospital. The doctors diagnosed typhoid and said she also had one very bad kidney. They told the family it would cost 1.7 million shillings to treat her, or they could take her to India and get her a new kidney." At that point, after the doctors put Mary's sister on oxygen, the family had called Mary and told her that her sister had passed away.
However, Henry told us, the family knew of a preacher, a healer, who was very good at healing people. They took Mary's sister to the preacher, and after some prayer he had Mary's sister stand and run around. She ran and ran. When some time had passed the sister said she felt very well, felt healed.
So, just to be sure, Henry told us, the family took Mary's sister back to the hospital to have her examined again. This time the doctors found no signs of typhoid. No kidney problem.
"Well," I said to Henry. "That is certainly the best possible outcome you could hope for."
"Yes," Henry said."I think so too."