Our faith in God or in anything else will always reach a testing point. This is when we know for sure whether what we have been ‘banking on’ pays off or not. When I came to knowing God in an official manner it was on the 9th of January 1983. I had been sick for a while up to that time. One winter evening in June 1982, I woke up at around 2 in the morning with my whole body burning as if a million hot needles were being pricked into every square millimetre from head to toe.
I woke up and looked at myself I saw what looked like I was bitten by some insects which were of course not in my bedding because I checked and saw nothing. I removed everything off my bed and checked further and still there was nothing there. But how come I was so badly bruised was a total mystery. I could not go back to bed that morning but sat up until dawn. I went to work that with my body still itching. More than me worrying about the issue on hand I had a total different feeling on the inside. Somehow I knew that this was going to be a battle and I was not ready for it. It became a journey that would end up in Church six months after it started.


Before this thing began my brother was already a born again Christian, and around the first week of June 1982 some of his Church friends came to my home one Saturday morning and told me that they wanted to tell me about Jesus. I told these guys to leave me alone as I felt that I will know if I needed Jesus or not. When they left they were very disappointed but assured me that they were going to pray for me to realize that I needed Jesus. I told them to go and do whatever they felt was the right thing to do. I never imagined that what I said to them was wrong until much later in my life. Before the end of the same month the incident above took place. This became the beginning of a fierce battle for my health. On the second day after my first encounter with the problem the itching began around six in the afternoon and went on for the whole night. I am not too sure if I can explain how this thing felt like but let me try to give you a picture. If you lit a million matchsticks and put them all over your body or took a lot of hot needles and pricked your self with. That’s what it felt like; but more intense than that. This caused me to scratch my self using a rough towel because my hands were not enough to bring any relief. In the morning the itching would stop and only blisters would bear witness to the trauma I had experienced. I only went to the hospital around the third day but then another problem occurred. When I got to the hospital there was no physical trace of the burning and scratching, not even a single blister would be there. So this made the doctors to believe that I had some kind of allergy, and they took both blood and urine tests that came back negative from any allergies.


I started taking a 5ml of penicillin injection every day at six in the evening as prescribed by the doctors. This helped me a lot as I could not feel the burning anymore even though the blisters came up every day at six and vanished the next morning at six. Around October the same I began entertaining the idea of seeking help from witchdoctors. I went to see the first witch doctor in October and by the end of December 1982 I had been to four different ones and none could help me. They brought a different perspective to the disease and told me that I was under someone’s spell. By that time the medical doctors had put me off al most every foodstuff and my diet consisted of plain brown bread and black tea. I ate this three times a day like any regular meal.


Deep down in my heart I had a lot of questions that no one could answer. When you have a problem you normally expect answers but mine was a literal stalemate. Nobody seemed to have an idea as to what was wrong with me and I was now very afraid. My only consolation was the injections I had every evening. These at least gave me some relief. The thought of trying God never crossed my mind. It was like my mind was bound by some unseen force. Having grown up in a Christian family should have at least made me to remember to try God. I never told my brother about my problem even though he was aware of it since we lived under the same roof. I was too embarrassed to do so because I knew that when his friends came to tell me about Jesus it was some kind of a setup and they told him how negative I was towards them. So I decided that I was going to die silently and never reveal my need for God’s intervention. This became my new life and as much as it was difficult I somehow managed to get around it.


One of the experiences that I will never forget was what happened to me one winter night in July. Normally July is the coldest month in winter. That particular night my body burned up to a point of driving me insane. I tried to resist the pain but could not as it became terrible than I could bear. It was about just after midnight when I went outside and lay under the tap of cold water and just fell asleep there. This was more comfortable than the pain I felt. This I will never forget and will always thank God for healing me. I would normally lock myself up in the bedroom and cry the nights away. One Sunday afternoon I was at home when one of my younger brother’s friends came to see me. By this time I was ready to hear what anybody wanted to tell me. My will was broken and I was truly humbled. I knew that I needed God to help me. This brother gave me a pamphlet which indicated that an Evangelist was coming to their Church on the 9th January 1983 and this was still a month away. I took the pamphlet and with much appreciation I told him that I was going to be there. He left and I sat there looking at that pamphlet wishing that the evangelist was coming the next day. The 9th of January seemed too far. I needed God, and I needed Him on the spot. To be continued. MVK