In 1986 my family's life was turned upside down. We were returning home from a trip when we had a terrible car accident. It was a miracle no one died. My two-year-old brother was found on top of the car. Had the car turned one more time he would have been crushed under it. Although no one died, my little sister was left a paraplegic- she could not feel or move her legs- she was only ten years old. For the next 4 years my parents did everything possible. When medicine failed, they turned to God. People sent mail from all over saying, do this prayer for this long or send this much money to this sadhu and she will be healed. I was only 13 and I would get up 30 minutes early just to pray for my sister Sungeeta. Mom would pray all day long. All the happiness in our house was gone, we were miserable. After 4 years Mom and Dad decided not to send any more money to sadhus, they had already spent thousands. They still kept praying though.
Unrelated to all this, we decided to remodel our house. Daddy owns a small civil engineering company and one of his architects, Tesfaye - an Ethiopian gentleman, came to take measurements of the house. When he saw Geetu, he asked what had happened and then went back to the office and told my Dad he would like to pray for her. The first thing Dad said was "We won't pay you for that". He smiled and said he didn't want any money and started coming over everyday to read from the bible and talk to Geetu.
At this point, no one was interested in Jesus. We had our own Gods. We were Jains and did the Shantinath Katha every Sunday, in fact, us kids had a lot of it memorized. We had also started doing fasts for Shiva, it was our second round of 17 fasts when Tesfaye started coming over. We weren't interested in converting to Christianity. I remember in 8th grade I had a classmate who tired to convert me and I remember telling him that I would never become a Christian.
So, everyday he would come and read from the bible and then pray for Geetu. Only Geetu and mom were there, I occasionally walked by but was more interested and watching tv. After a week or two Tesfaye, thinking that there was a language barrier introduced us to a pakistani family. They began inviting my family to come to church. My parents said yes, just to be nice but they didn't really mean or want to go.
Finally after 1-2 weeks of calls every Sunday morning, night and Wednesday night they went, just Mom, Dad and Geetu. Right as they entered Mom felt like crying, but figured she was just getting emotional and stopped that emotion. As the service continued they all realized they were not enjoying themselves. Everything was so different than anything that they had ever experiences before. People were jumping up and down in their seats, running around the pews, raising their hands and praying and the preacher was so loud. In their hearts they individually said, "Jesus if you are real, show us something today, otherwise we are not coming back".
At the end of the service everyone in that church used to go forward for a blessing from the pastor. Not wanting anyone to say that they didn't try it all, Mom took Geetu forward and also raised her hand like she had seen everyone else doing. As soon as Mom did this, Mom started crying and couldn't stop. Ladies gathered around Geetu and started to pray with her. Soon they asked if they could pray that she be filled with the Holy Spirit. Mom didn't know who that was but figured Holy, it must be ok. A little while later they told Mom that Geetu had been filled with the Holy spirit, but before Mom could really understand what that was, the pastor's wife came over and said that it wasn't the Holy spirit but a bad spirit. But she said the whole church would fast and pray and to come back on Sunday and the spirit would be cast out.
We all went that Sunday. After the service when I prayed at the alter I felt God's presence and love. I didn't understand it at the time. I was too busy listing off my prayer request and making sure I prayed for others instead of enjoying the presence of God. The church people prayed for Geetu, but they said the spirit was too strong and to come back. So we went back Sunday night, then Wednesday and then Sunday morning and then Sunday night. They would say the same thing everytime after prayer and by this time Mom was getting frustrated. It was like we were stuck, just like before. Before Mom had to be sure she did all the prayers anyone sent and now we had to keep coming back although nothing seemed to be happening because who knows, once the bad spirit was cast out, what if Geetu started walking. So that Sunday night, frustrated with the whole thing, she was especially frustrated with the family who brought us to church. She refused to go forward at the end of the service and when the wife asked her to raise her hand and pray Mom didn't. Instead and to this day Mom doesn't know why, she joined her hands together, knelt at her seat and said "Jesus I need you." As soon as she did this she felt a love she describes as melted butter going from the top of her head to the soles of her feet and she just didn't want that feeling to go away. Ladies saw what was happening and gathered around mom and started praying with her. They started telling her to say "I love you Jesus" "I need you Jesus" and she did. She was crying and the presence of god was so strong that people were wiping her nose and she didn't care. Then she lied down on the floor and people still continued to pray for her.
I was standing near by and watching all this not knowing what was happening to my Mom. This lasted about 30 minutes and then she finally got up. She wanted to know what had happened and was told that she had received a touch of the Holy spirit. She said to herself, if this is a touch of the Holy spirit, I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. People in church told her it took them 10 years or 30 years or that they cried a lot. Mom tried crying and couldn't and she definitely couldn't wait thirty years and told God this. By this time, we were all interested in Christ. We had stopped our Shivji fasts at the 14th or 15th one. Doing this before would have caused a lot of fear at what will he think and what will happen to us now, but we just knew Jesus would take care us.
The Monday following all this Mom sent us all off to school and work and said she was going to get filled with the Holy Sprit today. When we came home from school Mom was laughing. We hadn't seen her this happy since the accident. She told us that she had been baptized with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues for us. For those of you who don't know the Holy Sprit. He is god's spirit. When Jesus arose from the dead and then went up to heaven, before He went up he said He would send down a comforter- the Holy spirit . When you are baptized with the holy sprit you receive a language that you do not know, but that god gives to you. Once the Holy sprit comes to live in you he stays there. Unlike when Maata comes you don't lose any sense of awareness of your surroundings and have complete control of your faculties. When you speak in this other language, it is God speaking through you- praying. That night she was praying in her room and she felt lead to come to each of us individually and just softly and lovingly touch us and pray for us. After praying for each of us individually she was about to sit down when she was lead to go in the direction of where dad was laying on the carpet and when she got there she "plopped" down and her hand landed on his heart and she said a prayer in tongues for her. The very next day Dad walked from his office, 0.7 miles all uphill without stopping. Before that whenever Mom and Dad went for a walk he would have to stop every block because of his heart. This was our first physical miracle.
Now that Mom was baptized in the Holy Sprit she wanted to get baptized in water. The church we were attending refused to baptize her because she still wore jewelry, pants ands indian clothes. So Tesfaye, who was a minister in Ethiopia before he came here came and baptized Mom in the bathtub. I remember before he dunked her head down he asked if she was willing to follow Jesus for the rest of her life. I remember being amazed that she could say yes, because less than 1 month before we had been praying to shiv.
That Friday the pakistani famiy came to pray with us. They said they would stay all night if needed but cast that bad sprit out of Geetu. Well it started to snow and by 11pm there were 2 inches on the road. Not wanting to get stuck at our house they left. We however, kept praying. At midnight my older sister Anu didi started speaking in tongues. Geetu had been praying but everytime she prayed, her tongue would move in and out. We had been told that this was a sign of the bad sprit. Finally at 1am, not knowing what to do we called Tesfaye. He had said we could call him whenever we needed to and so we did. He stayed on the phone till 3 am and then he finally said what we knew he had been thinking all along, that this wasn't a bad spirit but the Holy spirit. As soon as we thanked god for the Holy Spirit Geetu started speaking in tongues. So Geetu had never had a bad spirit, it had been the Holy Spirit all along…the people at the church had just failed to properly recognize it.
At 4 am every time I would pray my words were getting all garbled up, so I went to sleep. When I woke I started praying in my room again and again my words were all garbled. After lunch we sat down to pray again and after 15 minutes I finally realized that all these garbled words were actually me speaking in tongues. That evening we called Tesfaye over to come and baptize all of us. After dinner we sat down to pray again and Dad started speaking in tongues. The whole family except Salil, my youngest brother was now speaking in tongues. We all got baptized that night. In a matter of 4 days god had changed my heart so much that I could say I would follow Jesus for the rest of my life and mean it.
The miracles from that point just keep coming and I could go on forever talking about them about how he helped us find a new church, how we saw God fill teeth with silver fillings, lengthen legs, how God healed the sick, cast out bad spirits and fill people hearts with peace and my wonderful missionary trip to India this past summer. But I am just going to complete our family's testimony. I will share about the other miracles another time. Two summers ago my 13 year old brother was diagnosed with a rare kidney disease. It was so bad that we were told that he would be on dialysis by the end of the year and there was no hope of a kidney transplant because the new kidney would get the same disease. After dialysis he would only have a few years left to live. Our only hope was God and he did the impossible. Today Salil is baptized in the holy spirit, loves God and is healed. The doctors are amazed.
Praise God! We serve a mighty God.
And now whole family is serving Christ in different different ways, He saved us, He gave us pure joy, happiness, peace and love. Praise God for His plans and changing our lives...
Unrelated to all this, we decided to remodel our house. Daddy owns a small civil engineering company and one of his architects, Tesfaye - an Ethiopian gentleman, came to take measurements of the house. When he saw Geetu, he asked what had happened and then went back to the office and told my Dad he would like to pray for her. The first thing Dad said was "We won't pay you for that". He smiled and said he didn't want any money and started coming over everyday to read from the bible and talk to Geetu.
At this point, no one was interested in Jesus. We had our own Gods. We were Jains and did the Shantinath Katha every Sunday, in fact, us kids had a lot of it memorized. We had also started doing fasts for Shiva, it was our second round of 17 fasts when Tesfaye started coming over. We weren't interested in converting to Christianity. I remember in 8th grade I had a classmate who tired to convert me and I remember telling him that I would never become a Christian.
So, everyday he would come and read from the bible and then pray for Geetu. Only Geetu and mom were there, I occasionally walked by but was more interested and watching tv. After a week or two Tesfaye, thinking that there was a language barrier introduced us to a pakistani family. They began inviting my family to come to church. My parents said yes, just to be nice but they didn't really mean or want to go.
Finally after 1-2 weeks of calls every Sunday morning, night and Wednesday night they went, just Mom, Dad and Geetu. Right as they entered Mom felt like crying, but figured she was just getting emotional and stopped that emotion. As the service continued they all realized they were not enjoying themselves. Everything was so different than anything that they had ever experiences before. People were jumping up and down in their seats, running around the pews, raising their hands and praying and the preacher was so loud. In their hearts they individually said, "Jesus if you are real, show us something today, otherwise we are not coming back".
At the end of the service everyone in that church used to go forward for a blessing from the pastor. Not wanting anyone to say that they didn't try it all, Mom took Geetu forward and also raised her hand like she had seen everyone else doing. As soon as Mom did this, Mom started crying and couldn't stop. Ladies gathered around Geetu and started to pray with her. Soon they asked if they could pray that she be filled with the Holy Spirit. Mom didn't know who that was but figured Holy, it must be ok. A little while later they told Mom that Geetu had been filled with the Holy spirit, but before Mom could really understand what that was, the pastor's wife came over and said that it wasn't the Holy spirit but a bad spirit. But she said the whole church would fast and pray and to come back on Sunday and the spirit would be cast out.
We all went that Sunday. After the service when I prayed at the alter I felt God's presence and love. I didn't understand it at the time. I was too busy listing off my prayer request and making sure I prayed for others instead of enjoying the presence of God. The church people prayed for Geetu, but they said the spirit was too strong and to come back. So we went back Sunday night, then Wednesday and then Sunday morning and then Sunday night. They would say the same thing everytime after prayer and by this time Mom was getting frustrated. It was like we were stuck, just like before. Before Mom had to be sure she did all the prayers anyone sent and now we had to keep coming back although nothing seemed to be happening because who knows, once the bad spirit was cast out, what if Geetu started walking. So that Sunday night, frustrated with the whole thing, she was especially frustrated with the family who brought us to church. She refused to go forward at the end of the service and when the wife asked her to raise her hand and pray Mom didn't. Instead and to this day Mom doesn't know why, she joined her hands together, knelt at her seat and said "Jesus I need you." As soon as she did this she felt a love she describes as melted butter going from the top of her head to the soles of her feet and she just didn't want that feeling to go away. Ladies saw what was happening and gathered around mom and started praying with her. They started telling her to say "I love you Jesus" "I need you Jesus" and she did. She was crying and the presence of god was so strong that people were wiping her nose and she didn't care. Then she lied down on the floor and people still continued to pray for her.
I was standing near by and watching all this not knowing what was happening to my Mom. This lasted about 30 minutes and then she finally got up. She wanted to know what had happened and was told that she had received a touch of the Holy spirit. She said to herself, if this is a touch of the Holy spirit, I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit. People in church told her it took them 10 years or 30 years or that they cried a lot. Mom tried crying and couldn't and she definitely couldn't wait thirty years and told God this. By this time, we were all interested in Christ. We had stopped our Shivji fasts at the 14th or 15th one. Doing this before would have caused a lot of fear at what will he think and what will happen to us now, but we just knew Jesus would take care us.
The Monday following all this Mom sent us all off to school and work and said she was going to get filled with the Holy Sprit today. When we came home from school Mom was laughing. We hadn't seen her this happy since the accident. She told us that she had been baptized with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues for us. For those of you who don't know the Holy Sprit. He is god's spirit. When Jesus arose from the dead and then went up to heaven, before He went up he said He would send down a comforter- the Holy spirit . When you are baptized with the holy sprit you receive a language that you do not know, but that god gives to you. Once the Holy sprit comes to live in you he stays there. Unlike when Maata comes you don't lose any sense of awareness of your surroundings and have complete control of your faculties. When you speak in this other language, it is God speaking through you- praying. That night she was praying in her room and she felt lead to come to each of us individually and just softly and lovingly touch us and pray for us. After praying for each of us individually she was about to sit down when she was lead to go in the direction of where dad was laying on the carpet and when she got there she "plopped" down and her hand landed on his heart and she said a prayer in tongues for her. The very next day Dad walked from his office, 0.7 miles all uphill without stopping. Before that whenever Mom and Dad went for a walk he would have to stop every block because of his heart. This was our first physical miracle.
Now that Mom was baptized in the Holy Sprit she wanted to get baptized in water. The church we were attending refused to baptize her because she still wore jewelry, pants ands indian clothes. So Tesfaye, who was a minister in Ethiopia before he came here came and baptized Mom in the bathtub. I remember before he dunked her head down he asked if she was willing to follow Jesus for the rest of her life. I remember being amazed that she could say yes, because less than 1 month before we had been praying to shiv.
That Friday the pakistani famiy came to pray with us. They said they would stay all night if needed but cast that bad sprit out of Geetu. Well it started to snow and by 11pm there were 2 inches on the road. Not wanting to get stuck at our house they left. We however, kept praying. At midnight my older sister Anu didi started speaking in tongues. Geetu had been praying but everytime she prayed, her tongue would move in and out. We had been told that this was a sign of the bad sprit. Finally at 1am, not knowing what to do we called Tesfaye. He had said we could call him whenever we needed to and so we did. He stayed on the phone till 3 am and then he finally said what we knew he had been thinking all along, that this wasn't a bad spirit but the Holy spirit. As soon as we thanked god for the Holy Spirit Geetu started speaking in tongues. So Geetu had never had a bad spirit, it had been the Holy Spirit all along…the people at the church had just failed to properly recognize it.
At 4 am every time I would pray my words were getting all garbled up, so I went to sleep. When I woke I started praying in my room again and again my words were all garbled. After lunch we sat down to pray again and after 15 minutes I finally realized that all these garbled words were actually me speaking in tongues. That evening we called Tesfaye over to come and baptize all of us. After dinner we sat down to pray again and Dad started speaking in tongues. The whole family except Salil, my youngest brother was now speaking in tongues. We all got baptized that night. In a matter of 4 days god had changed my heart so much that I could say I would follow Jesus for the rest of my life and mean it.
The miracles from that point just keep coming and I could go on forever talking about them about how he helped us find a new church, how we saw God fill teeth with silver fillings, lengthen legs, how God healed the sick, cast out bad spirits and fill people hearts with peace and my wonderful missionary trip to India this past summer. But I am just going to complete our family's testimony. I will share about the other miracles another time. Two summers ago my 13 year old brother was diagnosed with a rare kidney disease. It was so bad that we were told that he would be on dialysis by the end of the year and there was no hope of a kidney transplant because the new kidney would get the same disease. After dialysis he would only have a few years left to live. Our only hope was God and he did the impossible. Today Salil is baptized in the holy spirit, loves God and is healed. The doctors are amazed.
Praise God! We serve a mighty God.
And now whole family is serving Christ in different different ways, He saved us, He gave us pure joy, happiness, peace and love. Praise God for His plans and changing our lives...
No comments:
Post a Comment