Ethiopia

I was born into a family who practiced witchcraft, and they dedicated me to an evil spirit. One night an evil spirit came to me where I was sleeping and insisted that I should kill myself. Then I saw a vision that looked like a fire that came from heaven. I looked at it in amazement. The fire descended onto our house, setting it ablaze, and finally it penetrated the house and stood behind me. The moment the fire was behind me, it looked like the Son of Man-a beautiful man. He started to speak to me. “What did the evil spirit say to you?” He asked. “He said I should commit suicide.” The Son of Man said to me, “You must not kill yourself; you’ll be My witness.”

After the incident I went to Addis Ababa and worked in a relative’s house. My family in Addis belonged to the Coptic church, and although they didn’t read the Bible, they had one on their bookshelf. I took it and started reading the Gospel of John in the New Testament. I started to wonder who this Jesus was whom I had never heard of before. As I was about to clean the room I had another vision. The vision was of Jesus, the same Jesus I saw before. He said to me: “You will be My witness; start going to church and accept Me, for I am your Savior.” I cried and cried and cried. I became very afraid and considered myself a Pentie [derogatory name referring to a Pentecostal]. “I have really become a Pentie; I don’t want to be a Pentie,” I thought to myself. I fell asleep and all night long I heard the words: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus . . . ” The next morning I went to the church and accepted Jesus as my personal Savior.

The moment my family heard about this, they expelled me from the house, saying, “If you’ve become a Pentie, you have betrayed us, and we don’t want to see you. Leave our house.”

This happened eight years ago. Since then I’ve been serving the Lord. In the name of Jesus, I will never go back to my old way of life.

Open Doors, Brother Andrew with John & Elizabeth Sherrill, The Narrow Road, Grand Rapids, MI: Fleming H. Revell, 2001, p. 143.