Miracle-seekers go to South Texas olive tree for supernatural healing: "A lot of people come here with a lot of faith"

CBS News

21-04-2025

An olive tree native to Jerusalem grew into a tree from a branch in the ground fertilized with prayer. Twenty-two years later, claims of the miraculous are still rooted near "The Miracle Tree" in Concepcion, Texas.
Estella Garcia Cantu can laughingly admit she is just as obsessed with "The Miracle Tree" in her mother's yard as her mother, Estella Palacious Garcia.
Palacios Garcia passed away in 2017, but left Garcia Cantu to carry the legacy of miracles connected to her tree.
"On June the fourth, the tree will be 23 years old since my mom planted it, and it's a part of the family," Garcia Cantu said.
The property is an acre off FM Road 1329 in Duval County's Concepcion. But its rural location has not stopped miracle seekers from across the globe from coming to the South Texas property, desperate for a miracle.
"I've got to see so many and witness so many healings through the years that I've been here," Garcia Cantu said. "Because I've been here from the very beginning since my mom planted the tree."
Garica Cantu said her mother was a Bible-reading Christian who wanted God to give her a miracle source for his people. She recalled her mother going to a nursery in Edinburg that eventually got Palacios Garcia an olive branch from Jerusalem — no roots, she said. Her mother planted it and prayed.
Garcia Cantu said the olive tree was six feet tall in six months and kept growing.
"And a lot of people come here with a lot of faith," she said.
People started coming to her mother and the tree for healing. The 80-foot-plus feat of nature, Arbol Milagroso (Miracle Tree in Spanish), began changing lives.
"I walked in with a ball of stress over my shoulders. And in my head, constant pounding and just so stressed out in life," Michelle Salinas said.
The 50-year-old said doctors looked at her prediabetes and hypertension but could not stop her flesh-crushing migraines. No medication, she said, felt like it would work.
"Nobody could explain to me why I had such severe migraine headaches," Salinas said.
A person who believes in the power of prayer, Salinas said she kept passing the Miracle Tree going to and from work, but did not stop until March. After two visits, she said 13 years of migraines and medication for them are gone.
"It just was an ugly feeling. Just an ugly, ugly feeling," Salinas said. "And now I get up, no headaches. I feel so good. I really do."
She continues to come to the property for prayer to tackle her hypertension and prediabetes.
Garcia Cantu enlists the help of "prayer warriors" who carry out healing services connected to the tree: Prophet Jose Flores, Jose Alaniz, and Leticia Lemos.
Even with the help of the warriors, Garcia Cantu encourages visitors to make appointments because they are at the tree on the weekends.
Irma Rodriguez and Jose Anzaldua drove from Bay City after she heard about the tree on TikTok. The 45-year-old had to ask the love of her life to describe it to her because she had lost her sight.
According to the mother and grandmother, her impairment is a side effect of the medicine she was taking.
"When I first found out, yes, I was depressed," Rodriguez said. "I just couldn't believe this happened to me."
Rodriguez said the life-altering event made her change her life. She found God.
"My mom took me to a prayer group that she goes to," she said. "I got saved that day. And the next day, everything was different."
Desperate for a chance to take herself to the store or see her grandchild extend open arms to her, Rodriguez said faith gave her a vision of miracles.
"A lot of my family and my kids and friends, like, 'man, Irma, how do you do it?,'" she said. "I said, 'God, I have the faith that one day God is going to heal me.'"
Hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures line the walls of a chapel built near the tree, where driver's licenses, pictures, letters, testimonies, and more cover the wall in gratitude and even ask for healing prayers.
"I believe that once the Lord heals you, it's a permanent healing for the rest of your life," Garcia Cantu said.
Another reason people come to the tree is to hear the sound that resonates from its wood. For years, miracle-seekers have been able to place an ear to the tree to listen to the sound of rushing water — some claim to hear a whisper that sounds like a heartbeat on a particular side of the tree.
"I hear a little like, kss, kss," Rodriguez said.
She and Anzaldua are scheduled to return to the tree in late April for additional prayer.
It is the same tree where a woman who had cancer put her feet on the tree as warriors prayed. The woman was healed, they said. A picture shows her footprint left on the tree from the intense session.
The tree has almost needed a miracle, too. Garcia Cantu was not sure it would survive the deadly freeze of February 2021, but it did.
Garcia Cantu plans to pass the torch of the Miracle Tree over to her grandson, Princeton Wood. She said he received a miracle from the tree that doctors could not explain.
The trees can live up to 2,000 years. So, the miracles may keep happening in the middle of nowhere.