Testimony of Joyce Lees

I am 1 of 4 children and I have 2 sisters and 1 brother and I was born in Nether Whitacre. I am the youngest and there is 8 years between me and my next sister and she and my other sister were born very close together.

My Mom died when I was 20 she was always a very poorly lady BUT worked when she could to keep us children, as my father was a miner who was always drinking and smoking and Mom had to go to work when she was able or bartered to keep her children clothed and fed but I can never really remember going without, as my siblings were older and were working whilst I was still at school and they, my sisters, helped to buy things that I needed to help Mom out and they contributed to help me stay on at school as the Headmaster wanted me to, as I was good at some things, so I have always been so grateful to them. Of course we have had words over the years, mainly because of the age difference but as I matured, then all 3 of us became very close and have remained so.

However, until the age of 54 I was always told that I wasn’t wanted and had been told that the Local Dr and also a friend of the family wanted to adopt me, this did not happen but it remained in my mind that I wasn’t wanted but of course I was, then in 2002 I was on a power boat and their was a “freak wave” when coming out of Portsmouth Harbour and unfortunately I ended up with 2 fractured vertebrae, although we didn’t know this at the time. As a result of this accident, I had to give up work and my sisters took it in turns to stay with me all day and night, leaving their husbands for 3 weeks and after that period they just came during the day. It was during one of these days, when I was in such a lot of pain and on lots of medication, I said to my sister Josie “I am going to jump out of the window”, she couldn’t say anything for laughing, when she had calmed down she said “I don’t know how you are going to do that , you can’t even get out of bed” which was true and we both laughed and it was at this time that I said “why wasn’t I wanted as a baby, she said I was and I said but I was always told I wasn’t, she said I was stupid, I was always wanted but it was too much for Mom, as she was always poorly. I said but you have all let me believe I wasn’t wanted all these years, she said she didn’t realize it had affected me all this time and so I started to look at things differently.

In my time at home,as a result of this accident, my Dr.( Keith Pascoe) kept asking me go to Church, it wasn’t that I didn’t believe, as my Mom had brought us all up to believe and I regularly went to Church as a youngster, however, I felt that I couldn’t go but he convinced me that whatever I felt, God would always forgive me and love me, so in May 2003 I ventured to Coton Green, taken by Keith for many months, as I couldn’t drive. I had had to put my house on the market as I couldn’t afford the mortgage for more than 12 months and it was during this time that I had shingles in my ear and eye and this is why I am still totally deaf today in one ear, I also had bells palsy BUT I was prayed with by Bruce and Judith Ackers and the very next day the bells palsy had disappeared, what a miracle. I still have health problems today but I have tried to overcome them and I do enjoy life as much as I possibly can.

I had not been at Church long, when I received the Holy Spirit and wanted to be baptized but, as with a lot of things I didn’t realise I wasn’t ready and it has taken me a long time to get to this stage and the Lord has been so wonderful to me and now I have been really blessed and when Pastor David told me I could be baptized, HALLELUJAH, so today is going to be the start of my new life, where I repent all my sins and am blessed with the Holy Spirit and baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

I have lived by myself for about 23 years and along the way have had a lot of ups and downs but have always survived but didn’t realize at the time that it was God who always knew when I needed help of any kind and he always provided and pointed me in the right direction.

Just a short(ish) story but people who don’t know me personally will now have a better idea of who I am. I can only thank Coton Green Church for being such a welcoming Church and I am grateful for my Church brothers and sisters.

Joy’s Healing

John 8: 32 – Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Recently, I was reminded of events 30 years ago. I lay, dying in an ITU bed at Good Hope Hospital. I had been diagnosed with a really bad case of pneumonia and wasn’t responding to any treatment. My parents were told that I was likely to die as things showed no improvement. I was experiencing terrible nightmares and hallucinations due to the lack of oxygen and a very high temperature.

Pastor David called the whole Church to pray and fasting. Thankfully, the Lord moved and I was miraculously healed, but I was left very weak physically and mentally traumatised, which allowed the enemy to have a field day with my mind.

When I eventually came home from hospital I was really struggling mentally and was convinced that I was still going to die. Every time I closed my eyes to sleep, the enemy would bring fear and say you are going to die. Once again, I went for prayer and the Lord gave me the Scripture John 8:32. Right then, I truly knew that God had a purpose and a plan for my life in him and that there is no fear in Christ Jesus!

I let this scripture sink right down into my spirit and began to believe the truth of God’s word and he brought healing to my mind. Every day each one of us faces fear in that battlefield of our minds and we have to make a daily choice to either believe the lies of the enemy or the truth of God’s word

Gill Johnson

When I was seven, a friend in my class invited me to Sunday School. I quickly got involved, enjoying all that they did, taking my three younger sisters along with me.

Four years later the young people started a Friday night youth event at church called “Christian Endeavour”. It was primarily to encourage discipleship in us, and it did. Among other things I learnt how to give a testimony, open and close the meeting in prayer and give a little talk based on some Scripture. After about a year, one of the leaders spoke about ‘giving your heart and life to Jesus’.

All my life I was taught to be a “good girl” and do the right thing. Giving my heart and life to Him was the right thing to do…..but it was also a choice I wanted to make. So that night  kneeling beside my bed and praying a prayer of repentance I asked Jesus in to my heart. I started to pray regularly and to read the Bible. Reading scripture was a discipline that I found hard, which is odd because I devoured fiction books. It’s only in recent years that I have grown to truly love His Word, and I believe it’s changing me.

As a teenager I met and fell in love with a Christian; when I had finished University we got married. Twenty years and three children later, he left me for another woman. I was devastated. At that point all of our children were still at home; we cried and hugged each other a lot. Friends and family were an immense help too, especially in those early days.

At the school where I worked, my fellow teachers, teaching assistants, secretary, cooks . . . all of them were also a great help. They were, (and still are!), a wonderful group of people – more than just work colleagues. They are committed to their work and want to help the children find fulfilment in every area of their lives and because of this they are great encouragers. As teachers we try to move the children forward and give them self confidence. My colleagues do this with the adults around them too, so it was a good place to be when I felt so fragile inside. Where I work is a safe place too; many of us have laughed and cried together.

My relationship with Jesus deepened after my husband left. Jesus became closer and closer to me. He and I laughed and cried together. He helped me to live my every day life and then, from time to time, He brought something to the surface that He wanted to change or to heal, or both.

I personally believe that God put me at Anglesey Primary School. He has taken care of me both through the people there and through other friends and family. I am now happily married again with a large, growing family – it’s wonderful being a Grandma. It’s wonderful being in God’s family too – people to love, and people to love you – as God does.

Paula – “The Lord is my ever present help in times of trouble”

My name is Paula Chapman and this is a short account of my life

I first came to the church in 1976 I have seen lots of changes since coming but most of all I have seen many changes in myself. I have had many problems along the way. In many ways I grew up in ignorance. I was not taught like others. I always craved love and attention from my mother, family and friends but always being let down again and again. Through all this I never felt fulfilled and because of this I ended up marrying the wrong man who browbeated and dominated me to the point of losing my own identity. His drinking and womanising continually reducing me to tears. Somehow I thought everything would turn out O.K. in fact things got worse. We had four children but one of my daughters died when she was three months old the Doctor said it was a cot death.

We then moved to Tamworth hoping things would change for the better. I discovered our next door neighbour was a Christian and I knew there was something about her I wanted and because of her I started going to church. I asked Jesus to come into my life and to forgive me for all my sins. What a difference this has made in my life. I continued to live with all the hardships, disappointments and fighting until finally we had a divorce. Sometime later I remarried  a man who was a Christian who was a widower. We were really suited to each other and was a real gentleman praying and reading the bible together. Life was so good, then my husband was diagnosed with cancer which was inoperable and he only had a few months to live. It was a very sad time dealing with the loss of someone who had meant so much to me.

After my husbands death I became physically unwell and having to undergo five operations and leaving me with further ongoing health problems but I praise God because He has been with me and sustaining me through every situation. I am a widow and have learnt to live alone and put my trust in God making me realise that I am the daughter of a King and I know that even through my difficulties I have been able to witness to others that through it all God has been my helper, my fortress a strong tower a very present help in time of need.

The Lord is my Helper, the Lord is my healer, the Lord is my ever present help in times of trouble.

This is my testimony,

love Paula

My own story about the reality of God in my life

Linda Currin

My parents always took me to church, and so from birth, I grew up listening to all the stories and words from the Bible. My upbringing was ingrained in every way with the morals and principles and very deeply entrenched principles of Church life, and the interpretations and confines the Word of God in that life. In our family of six we were born not too many years after the War, and so had little spare money but very hard working and disciplined parents who could make the very best of very little. Home grown and homemade were economical and healthy. So, although I was not aware of it, the principles of God’s Word were working all the time in my family, i.e. discipline, and ethical moral standards and a great respect for God and others produced a stability that is never really analysed, but none the less, does something in your own deeply ingrained ideas and lifestyle. So, I was ten years old when I really knew God nudging me one evening as I sat with the Girls Brigadiers at an evangelistic meeting in the Town Hall in my city of Hamilton, New Zealand. The only clear thought to me that night was, this is for the rest of your life!’
When God starts a work in an open heart, often we are unaware of how to hear Him, how He is leading and protecting and just exactly what He is doing, but many decisions I have made have come from a very strong in built ‘knowing’ that one way seemed more right than another. Nursing was one,wanting to be involved with missions of some sort or another, of wanting to work with people and make a difference in their lives, of having a great love and respect for the Word of God. As I dutifully read His Word and went to church and had a heart desire to be right with God, even when my rebelliousness was evident to many! Somehow in it all, I look back in hindsight, there was always this Knowing in my Knower, this way or that. Many times I did specially pray, and also many times I believe it was just as Paul says, ‘In HIM I live, and move and have my being ’wonderful! It’s like being in His love, coming from NZ to England with 3 children aged 4, 6 and 8, was not such a difficult step because the certainty of the move, the amazing Word that started the journey to England, a word from Ezekiel that our neighbour came over with one day – ‘Prepare your stuff for removal…’ that Garry had just read the week before. The selling of our house without even a ‘For Sale’ board up, the provision of many things including a house offered to us in Birmingham before we had even left the country etc. All this was just part of that ‘being in the Way the Lord led us.’ It opened up to us and as we took another step, another door opened, and we took another step. In fact, it would have been almost difficult to stay, although I have to say that if I had known we would still be living here 25 years later I may not have been so willing! We have had some hard times, but we have seen some quite miraculous provisions.
Our first house in this country we bought 10 months after arriving, had no credit rating, no furniture, nothing apart from a couple of towels and a sheet and were looking to purchase a detached, 3 bed roomed, un-modernised house in Coventry that nobody could value since it was a deceased estate with a boarded up corner shop attached. I had forgotten at that stage I had dreamt many months earlier that we were living in a house linked to a shop.needed 100% mortgage, which the estate agent told us we would never get and as we prayed outside the Halifax office, we went in believing for a miracle. And that is what happened – this very patriotic Englishman chatted about his country and we enthused greatly since we loved living in the UK and he offered us the whole amount! We accepted. That is just one of our stories, and we felt our cup was running over.
So, in a nutshell, I am telling you what Jesus has done for ME. He has never failed His Word; never once gone back on any of His promises to me, and to my family. We have been tested, stretched and gone through uncomfortable, distressing and very painful times and have hung on by our fingernails to promises we could not see, but I can honestly say, He is Faithful who has called us, and we walk on…Glory!

“…I left changed.”

Sonia Allen

I can remember driving past the Coton Centre when they first started building and saying to myself “I wonder what that is”. It was so heavy on my heart that I started to ask around if anyone knew. Finally, one day I was told it was a Church and I thought to myself “I’m going to try that Church one day”. Well that day came and when I walked through the doors I was on my own with 3 children and on antidepressants (all I wanted to do was close my eyes and never wake up). God touched my life that day and I left changed. I couldn’t wait to come back the following Sunday. God started to take me on a journey into the wilderness and many times I cried out to God to leave me but he picked me up and carried me. I came out knowing God more, loving Him more and knowing who I was in Christ. He has restored me and placed me on higher ground.

Isaiah 42:16 I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.

God is sovereign, He had the full knowledge of my problems and the sorrows I was facing but He is all-powerful – nothing is beyond His ability to heal or restore. I love the Lord with all my heart and every day I can’t wait to spend time with Him and have that intimacy with Him. There is a part of my heart that finds more and more of God every day!

Psalm 116:1-2 I love the LORD, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live.

There is never a day that goes by that I don’t feel his arms around me.

This year for Amy…

Amy Passey

I wanted to share a few thoughts on the journey God has taken us on this year.  Many people have come with us and we are so grateful for all the love, prayers, scriptures and encouragement.

By the end of this year, I will have had 11 months of treatment for Breast Cancer.   The diagnosis was a real shock of course.  We’ve had such excellent treatment all the way through by expert medical teams that have taken such good care of us.

The first few days were unreal.  I was scared but somehow felt safe.  We were overwhelmed with the love and support of family and friends.  Our reality was a peace that was vast and consuming and can only be attributed to our God.

The emotions came in waves.  Friends and church have been safe places to process and cry.  If we’re trying to hold it all together on a Sunday morning I think we are missing out on the restoration God loves to do when we’re honest in his presence.  There were lots of times I told God it was not ok that I was so ill.  He could handle it.

There are some benefits to having this kind of illness.  Suddenly what’s important to you becomes really clear.  The wish list becomes small and simple: another 50 years and a family.

The battle raged on.  About half way through we had a renewed sense that we needed to keep fighting and believing for good news in the face of the setbacks. I can’t see much of it now, but I am still confident that “I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”   Something I prayed a lot was for God to keep my dreams alive, to enable me to look beyond this illness, that I would do this season well and not waste it.

I’ve had a lot of time read.  A couple things have really stood out.  The first is this quote from a book called ‘God on Mute’ by Pete Grieg: “ I would not want to go back to being the carefree person I was. God has changed me. He has rewired me.  He blew a half time whistle on my life and made me realize that I had many of my priorities wrong.”  The second is that pain can make you bitter or better.  I choose better.

Just before my surgery, probably the scariest part of the journey for us, I wrote in my journal: “The conclusion that I keep coming to is that you God are bigger than this and that we are safe in your hands. Safe in the real sense, eternally safe.”

So we thank God for the journey we are on, continue to trust He is able to save us from whatever our circumstances are, insist on the possibility of miracles and to this faith and faithfulness, so that even if our prayers aren’t answered in the way we thought we wanted, we still trust Him.