Testimony of Anna Travis
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The past four years Ann has been instrumental in leading over 600 individuals to Christ. Twelve churches have been planted because of her efforts. Her enthusiasm and courage continues today.
I was born and raised in the United States. Somehow I missed knowing the truth about Jesus my first 34 years. My image of Jesus was a baby in a manger. That may be hard to believe but it is true.
After moving to Miami, Florida, I quickly ran with the wrong crowd. Before long I learned how to break into a car in a matter of seconds, stealing the radio or stereo while the owner was shopping or eating in a nearby restaurant. One thing lead to another and before long I became homeless, sleeping in my car until the finance company reposed it. Soon afterwards I bought a gun, obtained false identification, showing that I as a Federal Drug Enforcement agent. I even had a fake badge.
I looked for drug users and dealers. When I found someone using or selling drugs I allowed them to see the gun on my hip and quickly flashed the badge. The idea was to trick them into believing I was going to arrest them. They would beg me for another chance. I would then confiscate the drugs and say, “Don’t let me see you around here again.” It worked every time. They would hand over their drugs and thank me for not taking them to jail. If I had ever been caught, they authorities would have thrown me in Federal prison.
Not only a drug addict, I was an alcoholic as well. In the morning, I had a drink of alcohol instead of coffee, just to start my day. My vocabulary was as foul as a drunken sailor on a thirty-day leave. I was not only a “druggie” but also an alcoholic with a very foul vocabulary. I had begun drinking at the age of 17; and now instead of coffee in the morning when I woke up, I had a glass of scotch and a few beers. If I had ever been caught, I would have been sent to a Federal prison for years because of impersonating a Federal agent, along with a dozen other charges. And so it went…until my mother died of cancer.
He said, “when you come up here to view your mother’s body in a few moments, if you know Lord Jesus as your personal Savior, just tell her “good night, I’ll see you in the morning. You are simply telling her good night and will see her one day in heaven.” Then he said something that really shook me up. “As for the rest of you, when you come here you can only tell her goodbye, for you will never see her again.” Then he gave an invitation to receive Christ. I was the only one amongst the couple hundred people who raised their hand to accept Christ.
After the funeral, the minister came to me and showed me what I need to do to bring Jesus into my life. From that moment on, my craving for drugs and alcohol left me. I was instantly delivered from these addictions. My foul language was gone. There was a total change that day. I was completely set free.
I somehow thought I was handling everything okay. Well, a little tired perhaps, but still okay. I saw myself as doing everything totally unto the Lord, giving my time, talent and tithes, reading and studying his Word, praying and trying to do all the above work. I soon became more and more exhausted, and began to hurt all over as if I had a bad case of the flu. I was barely able to lift my arms above my head. It soon became worse instead of better, leaving me unable to work, so I lost my job. I knew deep inside, though, the Lord had a plan. I remembered what the Lord had told me once when a little old woman came to our church shortly after I received Christ. She was a missionary to Benin, West Africa. As she spoke about Africa, I said to myself, “Just like Isaiah.” I whispered the words, “Lord, here am I, send me!” At that very moment, the Lord spoke to me, that He was sending me to Africa. When I told my pastor, he just smiled, thinking it must have been the excitement of the moment. When I continued to ask him about the missions program, he said that I just did not qualify to go. Nonetheless, the Lord’s words stayed with me.
My pain continued, so when it became unbearable, I went to see a doctor. After much testing, they found a virus and at first thought it was lupus. Later, they said it was fibromyalgia, including chronic fatigue syndrome. Fibromyalgia affects all the muscles, ligaments and even the soft tissue. They also found abnormalities in the cerebral blood flow in the brain, tied in with a low pain threshold and sleep disturbances. I was exhausted all the time. It causes one to be completely exhausted all the time. In the mornings, it would take a couple of hours just to get moving. It was a huge job just to bathe, so I didn’t do it as often as it really was needed. I found it necessary to stop several times to rest and gain enough energy to continue. Although complete exhaustion and pain engulfed me every minute of the day and night, I knew the Lord had a plan for my life. I remembered what he had said to me that day at church.
I was trying to purchase a house in South New Jersey and then I lost my job due to my illness. Depression soon began to sneak its evil head into my life. The Lord blessed me with a little money, but it would not be enough to stay in New Jersey very long. I didn’t want to leave my church where I had grown to love the people dearly, but I knew I could not afford to stay. I felt the Holy Spirit was leading me to Tennessee. My sister and her husband were already there and my brother-in-law had invited me to come. I told my pastor that they offered to sell me a piece of their land, and that I had to go as I could no longer take care of myself. With a broken heart, I told the church that Sunday morning that I was going to move. It was so hard to go. My brothers and sisters in Christ told me to freely stay in the church’s mission house until I moved. I thought about how good God was, and I had to laugh that I was staying at a place reserved only for missionaries! The Lord always provides, and I knew that he had a plan. I was enabled only through the blessings of God to purchase a house in Tennessee.
My physical and mental condition began to deteriorate soon after moving to Tennesse. Severe pain, exhaustion, deep dark depression, sadness, anger, solitude, distress and violent mood swings tore me apart. I could not pray or read my Bible. I could not concentrate. It was impossible for me to go to church because of the pain. I no longer even thought about the plan God had for me. I just couldn’t deal with anything because of the pain. Then, a greater evil came upon me, worse than anything that had ever happened to me before . . . thoughts of suicide. I was planning it out to the very end. I had reached the point that I hardly ever went out, hoping that the phone would not ring, and no one would come to my house. I wanted to be alone. I came very close my first attempt at suicide. There were several other attempts after that. Looking back, I can see how God protected me. At a doctor’s appointment, I mentioned suicide. He called the police I they took me to state psychiatric hospital. The patients screamed all night. I was scared to death unable to sleep a wink. I stood most of the night, telling the nurses that I didn’t belong there. The next morning they sent me to another hospital. It was nothing like the first hospital and stayed there for a little while until they sent me home heavily medicated. There were other hospital confinements. The medications neither helped my physical or mental pain.
Doctors, not having any answers simply sent me to another doctor or hospital. My last stay was on the fifth floor of Baptist Hospital, where they began a series of Electronic Convolution Treatments, otherwise known as ECT’S or better known as shock treatments. The doctors even tried increasing the power and kept the current going to my brain for a longer period nothing helped. I had almost thirty treatments. The treatments were so hard on me that I had violent migraines after every session. God intervened at that point and put a stop to this butchery. He sent another doctor to do a brain scan. When he saw the damage that the ECT’S were doing, he demanded that they be stopped. All the shock treatments caused major damage to the portion of my brain that controls memory. I could no longer remember very much about the last three or four years of my life. I did not recognize any of my friends’ names in my personal address book, and could not even find my way home. I lost all memory about computers, although I had taught it. During that stay, I was able to pray with and comfort other patients who were going through the same type of treatment. Although most of my memory was gone, I could still quote scripture from memory! That never left me, and I still remembered in my spirit what the lord told me so long ago about Africa.
The doctors tried every drug for my condition that was available in the United States…and none of them helped! Still another torment came: I could not stand having anyone behind me! I would stop in my steps and allow whoever was behind me to pass. I would stop in the aisles of a grocery store and back up against the wall, waiting until everyone was out from behind me. No one will ever know the fear and torment I felt but Jesus.
When I went back to the doctor, he called me into his office, but could not look me in the eye. He got up and stood alongside me. I looked up at him and saw a tear falling from his eye. I remember watching it as it fell to the floor. He said, “Ann, there is nothing else that we can do for you. Nothing has helped.” When I left his office and stepped into the elevator, Satan got to me. All I heard was a fiendish laughter saying, “There’s nothing more we can do!” that the words echoed over and over again in my mind.
The next morning, I was in such pain that I wanted to get into a hot shower to relieve the muscle pain I was feeling. While in the shower, all I heard was that evil laughter again and again, saying over and over, “There is nothing we can do.” All of a sudden, I screamed, “Jesus!!!” Then immediately, all I heard was the water running. As I reached over to turn it off, I noticed that there was no pain!! I stepped out of the shower and began to dry off. Still no pain, nor was there any fatigue, I had energy! I was healed! I had peace and no pain.
When I went back to my doctor, the nurse asked me how I felt. I said, “I feel great!” She said, “You do?” I said, “I feel great. Jesus healed me!” She ran to get the doctor. The same doctor that gave me all those shock treatments and had told me there was nothing more that he could do for me. His nurse must have told him that I had really flipped now. He asked me the same questions as she had, and I gave the same reply. He could not deny that there was something different about me, but his education would not allow him to believe what I was telling him. I told him that those shock treatments didn’t work, and he agreed. I then told him that medication didn’t work either. With boldness, I told him that he needed to take me with him on his rounds in the hospital because I know the One that can truly heal, deliver and set them all free! He just smiled. I later found out that he reported my condition to the state as being a manic-depressive with no chance of recovery. And so, that makes me a “legal nut for Jesus!”
After a 14 year delay, God was true to the words that he had spoken to me about Africa. Though my first pastor told me that I did not qualify, I came to Uganda anyway in November of 1999 and ministered for 3 months in a Kampala church. Additionally, we held crusades in the slums where many gave their heart to Christ.
I returned in January of 2002, and moved to a little city called Soroti. My focus, the outlying villages. When I first began here at my home in 2002, it just grew to the point that I knew that I would soon have to think about registering it. I had never known anything about what an “NGO” was, but I found out very soon what it was going to take to register as an NGO. At the time, I didn’t understand what a church has to do with being an NGO, but that is how Uganda has it set up. I didn’t know the “ins and out’s” of it all, or how to begin. All I could do was to pray, reminding the Lord that this was his, and he needed to show me what to do next. The Lord sent strangers to my door to give me advice on just what was needed to file. I heard people say that if I wanted this church registered, I’d better be prepared to bribe each step of the way, and that it would still take 2 or 3 years before it “might” be approved. Others suggested that I should get a lawyer to handle it, for a fee of about $1000! Well, I refuse to bribe anyone, and I did not want to waste $1000 on a lawyer either. From the day I dropped off the folder with all the necessary information at the NGO board in Kampala, it took all of 11 days to be approved! Of course, the whole process was bathed in prayer. To God be the Glory! He has begun the work here and has handled each and every step of the way. Family members and friends just look at me at me in amazement, knowing how I was, and realizing that the hand of God touched me. I’ll praise him forevermore.
I never asked God why, but he has revealed to me that it was so the works of God should be made manifested. Already, my experience has helped me to minister to many people. We sing a song here that says, “When God says, “yes,” nobody can say “no!”
We serve a God of miracles! May his name be praised!
Because He lives, Anna Travis |
