Please note before you read my testimony I would like to say that a testimony is a person’s personal experience.  It should never be used to establish doctrine.  Everything that a person needs to know about salvation is found in the Bible.  A person’s faith must be based on the Bible alone and not someone’s experience.  

Like most young men I gave no thought to God. I never had anything good to say about the church and to my way of thinking all ministers were hypocrites and money grabbers.

At school I was very shy and found it difficult to mix and it was for this reason that I was sent to a school for backward children. When I was thirteen I was able to attend a normal school but even then my education was below average.

I left school when I was fifteen and my first job was at the Ever Ready factory packing batteries. I only stayed there a month and afterwards drifted from job to job.

Although I was still quite shy I possessed a very hot temper and I was extremely arrogant. I was also extremely bigoted against black people.

My racist views changed when I was invited to a West Indian party. The invite came from a Jamaican woman with whom I worked. It was the first of many such parties that I attended. I became addicted to reggae music. The result of attending these parties was that although I lost my bigotry I gained something new, a real foul mouth. It came to the position that I could hardly put a sentence together without using one or two swear words. By going to these parties and night clubs I heard a lot about the West Indies so I decided to go to Jamaica for a holiday. At that time I was working for British Rail and was not earning very much money, so I decided to take an evening job to help pay my fare. While I was doing this evening Job I met an elderly Jamaican woman by the name of Joanna Daley. I was told by the other workers to avoid this woman because she was a religious fanatic, however, one day she invited me to her church. I agreed to go little knowing what I was letting myself in for.

This church was different from what I had expected. I thought it would be the usual type of service where people came in sat down quietly, sang a couple of hymns, listen in complete silence to the preacher and then went home. How wrong I was! The meeting started with people clapping their hands, singing, and banging on their tambourines. This was the first time I had been to a Pentecostal Church and it was here I found people actually enjoying worshipping God. After the preacher (the late Bishop Small) had preached he invited all those who wanted prayer to come forward. The sister who had invited me, Evangelist Daley, encouraged me to go forward, this I did. Another sister told me “Jesus loved me, and that he had taken my sins away when he hung on the cross” She also said that if I called upon Him I would receive salvation. Although I did not fully understanding what she was saying I prayed “Jesus teach me, open my understanding.” After praying this prayer I felt different, it was like a heavy load had been taken from me.

The next day being Monday I had to go to work. I knew my mates would want to know what I had been doing over the weekend. I wondered just what I was going to tell them. I knew that if I told them I had been to church they would have a good laugh at me, on the other hand if I told them I had been to a party it would be a lie, and it was now that telling lies bothered me. When I got to work I told them the truth, and they thought I was simply joking. The next day (Tuesday) I bought a Bible, this surprised my mother too.

On the Thursday of that week I was at work as usual and had to go to the end of the yard. As I was walking down one of my mates offered me a lift in the forklift truck he was driving. I gladly accepted and travelled with him to empty the load on the truck. When he got to the place to empty the load on the truck he moved the leaver in order to raise it but did not notice my arm was in the way. As the load began to move I felt a terrific pain in my arm, and started to scream “MY ARM, MY ARM”. The driver immediately lowered the load and I managed to move my arm clear. One of the men standing nearby held me and took me to the nurse who called the local ambulance and I was taken to hospital.

One day as I was lying in the hospital bed I heard a voice, but could not see anyone, but the voice said “Look what’s happening to you now that you are in the church, you had better get out of it before a worse thing happens”. I replied “Satan you were the cause of this, get out of my life”. That was the first time I had spoken to the Devil directly” and I knew he didn’t like what I had said. After the conversation I closed my eyes and saw blood all around me. Then I saw the cross come down from heaven. As the cross got nearer it became bigger. It was about a year later that I understood what the vision meant. It meant this, because Jesus had shed His blood at Calvary, my sins had been washed away. THANK GOD FOR THE BLOOD.

Things began to change in my life after this. I gave up smoking, swearing, going to parties and getting drunk. When a person finds Jesus they find all the peace, happiness and enjoyment they need. Six months later I was baptised by submersion in water and a few months later I was filled with the Holy Ghost and spoke in other tongues.