It was two o’clock in the morning and the Ouija board was very active; spelling out first the name of my brother and his address, some of my relatives, even dead ones, then named the colour of the front door of the house in which I had grown up in and lived in until age of nineteen. You could ask it anything and it would answer. I spent hours on end communicating with it, always alone. Each night I could hardly tear myself away from it. Usually though it took the lead and said ‘goodbye’. I didn’t know it then but this was the beginning of the end of my twenty-five year search for truth.

But there were horrendous things to come first.

I had plenty of time on my hands, having arrived back in my adopted country, but this time in a new city hoping for a fresh start. I had lived there a good thirty years but my attempts to go back and live in my homeland had all failed. I knew only one person when I arrived in this new city but quickly found a place to stay and a little later some work. I had three jobs over the next three months, always something happened that made me leave. But I was used to this; it seemed to be the pattern all my life, many relationships but never quite being able to settle into one.

All this was becoming quite disturbing because at the age of forty-nine I already had one marriage behind me, at a very early age, and over within a year. After that a succession of relationships, one after the other, non-stop until finally one day I just gave up. The last one turned me into what a friend called ‘a basket case’.

Leading up to this last period was twenty-five years of delving into just about everything in the new age movement, though at that time it wasn’t known to me that that was what it was called. I just wanted help.

I tried all the self help courses I could lay my hands on. I just kept going from this one to that one to the next trying to fix myself. But nothing worked. I looked in the mirror one day and said to myself ‘I’m going to be nice today’, but inevitably I did something horrid.

Werner Erhard’s EST, later called The Forum, Dianetics, where I learned to regress people with amazing results. Da Silva Mind Control, A Course in Miracles. Three years formal study of Astrology with exams which led to me casting horoscopes. This was the area of life by which I would judge; people that were the ‘wrong ‘ sign for me, I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole. Pendulum swinging, Tarot Cards, Zen, Shirley McLain, Edgar Cayce, Carlos Castenetes, Seth; it was the last that led me to the Ouija Board, because the authoress got power from it to write the book, and I wanted power over my life very much. I just did not have much time left to make something of myself.

I went to the library to research Ouija boards (though I remember playing with a planchette when I was about 3 or 4 years old). My research was such that I ignored the bad things that were written about it and took the advice to say the Lord’s prayer before using it, to be safe. This I did, but the spirits told me they were my ‘friends’ and I needn’t do that. I was led to automatic handwriting; the spirits wrote lovely poems. One was called Freedom on the Road to God. I could even draw. Picasso-like paintings of cats, and I am no artist. I lost these talents when I revolted.

There came a two-week period where this one spirit communicated to me when to go out, where to go and what to do when I was out. I could go on forever about the things I did in obedience to this spirit who was very friendly. But, as it had taken me into the Bible, Luke I think, it seemed okay. Until one day I decided to ask it where the Christian workers were. I went on about that several times until one day it got me to pack up my bags, everything. It told me to leave my place of residence for good and follow it. I can’t imagine what state of mind I was in to do all this, but the key thing was that I was very gullible and very vulnerable, practically alone. I told my neighbour who was a ‘Christian’ and she said it seemed to be genuine. I took off in my car, with the spirit directing every move. I drove around for hours at its directions until at 3 in the morning I finally stopped and asked in desperation when we were going to go to meet the Christian workers. Finally, we set off up a mountain highway for one hour and into a remote bay, with a car park.

Then supernatural things began to happen; eventually, a voice spoke out of my mouth saying it was Michael and it was God. Then a horrendous babble of voices came into my mind; non-stop babble. Next, my car wouldn’t start.

I was alone, in a deserted area in the early evening, one hour away from the city. Here, in my fear, I began to notice that there was a very small part of me left. Now I knew it was all wrong, everything. All I had done had led up to this. That small part of me that was left began reasoning. What would I do if this wasn’t happening? If this babble of voices weren’t there? Oh yes, I’d get help to get the car started. I looked around and to my utter amazement there was a Park Ranger. I asked him and He started my car and I was off driving back the one hour down the mountain with the babble of voices, but that part of me able to function as well.

The next stage of the long climb out of everything came when I first called the churches. None were open except the Catholic church. Yes, the priest said he would see me. I couldn’t speak properly, the ‘thing’ had me by the throat, but the man of God seemed to understand. Can you be here in four hours? Can you drive? Yes, yes, yes. Please.

For six months this man of God met with me once a week. He was a missionary priest from Peru and worked with the poor. He was up on six months leave to see his aged parents, one of whom was dying. In the Rectory, door closed, every week he read the Bible to me and prayed, and I cried. Sometimes the spirit would throw me on the floor when he prayed. Once he told it to leave and *I* got up to leave. Dear me, but I felt safe with him there. However, I was frightened for a very long time. This spirit had a grip on me.

During these weekly sessions, I soon became quite interested in what was being read to me. I was hearing it loud and clear, pondering on it, asking questions. A bit later on I remember saying ‘I feel as if I have come to my senses’. He gave me a book to read, ‘Mere Christianity,’ and never once reprimanded me. He spoke to me about judgement but I didn’t really take it in at the time. I questioned the resurrection and he didn’t blink an eyelash. He left me to find out the truth for myself.

There was no counselling, just him, me, the word of God and prayer. And a listening ear. I had never ever been accepted so unconditionally before in my whole life. At home after a bit I wanted my own Bible; a thought came into my mind that I should find out some answers there. One day I came home from one of my meetings with the man of God and the house mate I had previously shouted at in anger, and whom I really didn’t like at all, couldn’t stand being in her presence even, suddenly didn’t bother me at all. I kept looking around as if something was missing. I felt lighter, free. Something was not there that had been there before. I had no hateful feelings towards her. She didn’t know what to make of it either. We became good friends. That was God and I knew it.

Soon I joined a congregation and the brothers and sisters were always ready to gather around, to pray with me and for me as the enemy tightened his grip. They stood by me during long hard struggles.

Wherever I went God’s people created a warm close circle around me. The things I had been involved in were brought to light and much prayer went up. I wrote down everything that I had yielded to and renounced it formally in front of witnesses. All books relating to these things were destroyed or thrown out as rubbish. Next I wanted to be baptized in water.

There have
been many very hard times but God has been with me and let me know in a very personal way that He knew all about me. I had quite a bit of deliverance ministry but in the end I gave it all up to the Lord, got into the Word and found the love of the Father, in a very personal way. Then healing began.

One night as I was praying the pastor came and sat with me. As I was praying out loud, suddenly the whole content of my praying changed and a flow of another language came forth. It felt to me as if the whole of heaven had come down on me and tears flooded out of me as I realised what was happening. I spent the whole evening singing and praying in these tongues and afterwards the pastor told me that it would be for my edification, which he believed I desperately needed. It turned out that we had both been praying for the same thing at the same time.

Right after this experience I began to be very bold in my speaking and was able to go before the congregation and share things in my life, and to speak the name Jesus with no fear of what people might think. My whole demeanour changed.

Nothing that was to happen now was anything I might expect. I took one day at a time, and although in my daily living my life was one of hardship, I look back now and see how God was drawing me in. To have the God of heaven come to you and call you a precious jewel and tell you that you are dearly loved and that you had gone through your whole life with your identity rooted in a feeling of worthlessness, which identity had now been wiped out, and made to know that you were now a new creation in Christ Jesus, was healing to my soul. The wretchedness, bitterness, anguish and sorrow, a life without hope, was replaced with Christ Himself. Fear left me. The mask came off, my eyes opened to the glorious riches in Christ.

During continued harassment from the enemy, whom I no longer feared, words were spoken into my heart – “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” I believed I needed to hang on to these words and trust Him because I seriously questioned why the enemy was still attacking me physically, but again scriptures came alive and fed my soul; “Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

In relationships, there were walls that had I erected but these came tumbling down as I practised forgiveness. I began to reach out to people as never before. I went from being a lone wolf to one surrounded by the family of God. As I became grounded in the word of God the frequency of attacks gradually dwindled, almost as if the enemy was smothered by the very truths that were imparted to me.

I have been connected to several churches since 1996, when I first started out, both here in England and abroad. I am interested in bible prophecy and contending for the truth and meeting together with believers in a home setting to pray, read the scriptures and share together and have a meal. My prayer is for a greater emphasis on meetings where all have an opportunity to participate and build each other up, using the gifts God has given each one, as was practised in the early church and taught by the apostles. It goes without saying that whenever the Lord brings people across my path who are involved in things of an occult nature I necessarily warn them. Sadly, this happens within the church itself.

More could be said, but I end here with thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ for pulling me out of the darkness and bringing me into His Kingdom of Light.

This new life, new birth, this new beginning, is received with immense gratitude and I eagerly look forward to the Day of His Coming again.