“The word of God is living and powerful.” —Hebrews 4:12
A Jamaican Reborn
It was just another day in Montego Bay, Jamaica’s tourist-filled metropolis. Patricia was pregnant with her third child. With her first two daughters, she was bedridden the entire nine months due to her poor health. But with this baby, she had been all around town, walking, driving, on the go. The last eight months had been wonderful.
It was just another day when she tripped on the carpet at home. It was just another day when she lost her unborn baby. She was never the same again.
But through your precious gifts, God led her to a new life.
Giving Up Ghosts
After that tragic day, Patricia became extremely depressed. She saw her baby—running, playing ball—all the time. People told her it was the baby’s ghost. And she believed it. She wasn’t just seeing her baby, but also her dead grandmother.
When people need help, they try everything. That’s what Patricia did—yoga, palm readings, tea-leaf readings, hypnosis. But none of it rid her of the hauntings; none of it gave her peace. In fact, she began seeing more. Her bed became a pile of filth; then it was the desk downstairs.
Was she going insane? People thought so. There were plans to admit her to a psychiatric institution once the next bed became available. Patricia was frantic; she needed a cure. On a whim, she visited one last doctor. But unlike all the others, this doctor gave her no pills. He simply did tests and advised her to do one thing while she waited for the results: pray.
So Patricia prayed. She called every God-fearing, church-going friend she knew and told them to pray. She even called her eldest daughter, a Sabbath-keeper in her freshman year at college.
Patricia was no stranger to Christianity. She had been baptized into a Baptist congregation at 12 years old. But after moving into the city, with its high sheen and seductive sparkle, church had become like chaff in the wind. She had been furious when her daughter had decided to get baptized. She’d even flown all the way to Florida to stop her—to no avail.
“If you get baptized, I don’t want anything to do with you anymore,” she remembered saying.
Tent Crusade
Now, she was the one searching—first with the Baptists, then the Pentecostals, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Catholics. But it was the same fruitless cure; she had merely traded hypnotism for speaking in tongues and tea leaves for rosaries. She was more confused than ever.
She asked God for a sign pointing to His true church. She even picked the location for it, a certain stretch of land by the seashore. Several weeks passed—then the sign came. Right in that very spot by the sea was erected a tent that was to host seven weeks of evangelistic meetings. At the end of that tent crusade, Patricia was baptized into the same Sabbath-keeping church as her daughter.
Funny enough, her husband tried to stop her, just like she had done to their daughter. And funny enough, she gave him the same answer her daughter had given her: “I love Jesus.” She never followed up with the doctor for her test results. She had found her cure—in Christ.
After her baptism, Patricia’s daughter flew home and gifted her a suitcase full of Amazing Facts Study Guides. Patricia completed the entire set. It was through those Bible lessons that she gained a full understanding of God. She loved how simple the questions were and how easy it was to find the answers in Scripture; she loved the brightly colored illustrations that allowed her to vividly picture Bible prophecy. She learned in no uncertain terms that her baby was not a ghost but was at rest in the ground. That truth gave her peace beyond measure. It was a peace that stayed with her—even when her husband, railing against her newfound faith, locked her out of the house.
She next discovered the Amazing Facts television program and the ministry’s online store. She ordered DVDs and books. Pastor Doug Batchelor’s testimony was the first she had ever heard; from it, she realized that the Lord meant for her to share her own experience with others. For nearly three decades, she has done so joyfully—even bringing Study Guides to her old spiritualist practitioners. And through her intercessory prayer, the Lord finally brought her husband into the same faith. “I praise God for the Holy Spirit, who taught me all truth through Amazing Facts,” Patricia writes.
Thank you for your part in sending that truth into all the world!