40 Pounds of Pressure

Born September 30, 1950 (at her request, I have omitted her name), the early years of her testimony will be kept unpublished until she says its OK. She is Caucasian, and her testimony reminds me a little of the one by Star Parker, an African American. Suffice it to say, she grew up...a slum kid...real hard! She was run over & almost killed by a drunk at age 10. But here is from about age 20 on:

An athletic (about 10 sports letters) high school graduate, she ended up for some years afterward in the street gang scene of St. Louis (with all of the horrors of that type of street life...though maybe not any worse than her earlier life).  After several years and for some strange reason, she began to yearn for an actual job and got one at the end of the cookie line at the largest bakery in St. Louis. Next to her was an older woman with a thick accent from the hills of Arkansas who called her "Young 'un". Ruby Barnes Gammill prevailed in her insistence that this tough street kid come live with Ruby and her husband, Harvey, (for the sake of safety) in their attic...and she did so (1963-1974...the Gammill's consider her to be their foster daughter).

But, the economy soon went sour; and Ruby headed back to Arkansas to weather the economic downturn in the hills of home...and they took "Young 'un" with them. "Young 'un" started dating a man, and ended up in an automobile wreck...a broken back. She was wheelchair-bound, paralyzed & paraplegic, unable to walk, living on a bed next to the small kitchen table in the small home. The boyfriend's parents somehow pressured him to go to a church revival, and "Young 'un" agreed...what the heck...to go, too. This woman, with emotions previously totally sealed beneath tough rawhide,  found herself strangely and profoundly struck by the event. She had an Easter-and-Christmas-service Christian friend named Fran. That very night, "Take me to Fran's, now!"...a 45 minute drive late at night. "Fran, I've got to talk with you!" "Y'all come on in, then," said Fran. "Fran, I've just been to a revival; and I've got 40 pounds of pressure in my chest!! I feel like I'm one inch from what I've craved all of my life, but I don't know what it is...help me!" "[name withheld], that's the Holy Spirit drawing you." Fran lead her (being at age 25...1975) to  Jesus right then and there and told her that she'd need to be baptized. 

Filled for the first time in her life with a sense of peace...immediately sensing a deep change...the thought of being baptized in the creek by that small rural church (Oak Grove Baptist Church) frightened her. On the appropriate day, they rolled her in her wheelchair down to the creek edge, and it calmed her to watch the baptism of another woman. They then helped her into the water, and the pastor went through the ordinance of believer's holy water baptism. As she went under the water, off-balance, she stretched her legs. Miraculously, her legs worked!! She walked up out of the creek with a miraculous and divine medical healing simply associated with the event.

During that summer, for over 60 days straight, she found a church service to attend every single night. She was hungry and thirsty to learn all that she could about this Father that she never knew that she had. Poor as she could be, she finally scraped together enough money to buy her first Bible during  a trip to Little Rock. She then found 74 year old Silas Luther Long, a retired, bivocational carpenter pastor (now deceased). "I dogged him 10-14 hours a day for weeks to learn all I could. And he (and his wife, Grace) was always so patient and full of scriptural interpretation. He left it to the Holy Spirit to teach me the application of Biblical truth."

She [name withheld] would later become a college graduate (initially majoring in something like nuclear physics), a 4.0 GPA alumnus of Dallas Southwestern Theological Seminary (the largest seminary in the world), an amazingly successful  developer of Baptist Student Union groups (serving out of Uptown Baptist Church) in the toughest part of Chicago, and a key administrative welfare-reform figure as head of their equivalent of South Carolina's DSS in the administration of a Christian pastor governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee. For a number of years, she was flying all over our USA attending church conferences as an invited national-conference speaker with a dynamite testimony of a life changed by Jesus.

God is her Father and the father that she never had and the only "Daddy" she now ever wants. When she prays, she often prays to "Dad", and "Dad" has changed "One tough Christian" with emotions locked in a steel lockbox into a fount of love whose greatest desire is to continue to be a vessel that The Lord pours through to help others; she credits any success attributed to herself  to "Dad". Isn't it wonderful how God used ordinary people...Ruby Gammill, a boyfriend's mother, Fran, and Silas Long to change a person so profoundly? And He can use each person reading this testimony...think about it! 

Betty & I became personally blessed when she became part of our personal "family"...living in our detached apartment...and the minister for missions, singles, and college students at NBC, in central S. C.,  on 1 Sept. 2001. She resigned that position in March 2003, lived with us through September 2004, and then sensed a call to missionary work in Kenya. She has since formed a 501c3 Christian organization in early 2004 named Legacy International (now, another organization has that name) out of which she, Cami, and Jennifer intended to begin to reach part of Kenya later in 2005 & beyond..."A Legacy for Christ Around the World". Having deliberately not previously gone through formal ordination, she had to do so to qualify the organization and became officially ordained 7 March 2004. She & Cami went to Thomaston, Georgia to intern at Pleasant Valley Church, lead there by God to learn concrete things about spiritual warfare [also check this about demonic]. This church, lead by Pastor Henry Wright, has an astounding ministry in the healing of people from the chronic diseases that seem to be demonic-spirit related. One can enroll in their (PVC) "Be In Health" deliverance program (the new web site was not yet "live" as of 3/2011 HERE). Her home church is Church at Rock Creek (in Little Rock, Arkansas). 
Since then, the mission to Kenya fizzled. Another ministry has been founded based in the USA.

You have just read a very brief example of the powerful, supernatural transformation of a person's life which is possible through the acceptance of Jesus as your savior. Are you tired of life as it now is for you? He will accept you just as you are right this second! Consider accepting Jesus now [check it out]!

(posted 2001; latest update 12 March  2011)