A Heartbreaking Path to Jesus: Overcoming Exploitation & Abuse

In this profoundly moving episode of the Jesus Studio Podcast, we explore the incredible journey of Leroy, a man whose early life was shrouded in darkness but found illumination through faith and resilience. Raised in an environment far removed from the typical childhood, Leroy's story is one of profound transformation, marked by encounters of grooming and abuse, yet punctuated by miraculous moments of spiritual awakening.

Join us as Leroy shares the heart-wrenching details of his past, from the complexities of his family's unconventional lifestyle to the deep scars left by betrayal and exploitation. But more than a story of pain, this episode is a testament to the power of redemption and the unyielding strength of the human spirit. Leroy's narrative takes us through his tumultuous journey, highlighting pivotal moments where divine intervention pivoted his path from despair to hope.

As Leroy unveils his path to healing, we are reminded of the indomitable presence of love, the transformative power of Jesus, and the unwavering support of the community that stood by him. His story is not just one of survival but of thriving through the discovery of faith, the embrace of his church family, and the unexpected joys of love and fatherhood.

Whether you're seeking inspiration, solace, or a reminder of the incredible resilience that resides within us all, this episode offers a beacon of hope. It's a narrative that challenges us to look beyond our struggles and embrace the possibility of a future defined not by our past, but by our capacity to overcome and find light in the darkest of places.

Content Warning: This episode discusses themes of abuse and trauma which may be sensitive for some listeners. Listener discretion is advised.

Guests Recommended Links & Songs

1. Playlist of songs
2. Testimony Songs Intro song My Testimony - Elevation Worship 
3. Nana’s song I could sing of your love forever - Delirious?
4. Soul Survivor 2010 song Let it rain (feat. Chris Quilala)- Jesus Culture
5. Growing in my identity song Canvas and the Clay (feat. Ben Smith) - Pat Barrett
6. The dream song Man of your word (feat. KJ Scriven) - Maverick City Music
7. Lily song Highlands (song of ascent) - Hillsong UNITED & Benjamin William Hastings
8. Coming back to church songs Come again - Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music
9. A Million Little Miracles - Elevation Worship & Maverick City Music
10. Outro song Before and After - Elevation Worship (featuring Amanda Cook
11. Playlist of songs in order
 
Book Recommendation: Und

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Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker 1

You're listening to the Jesus Studio podcast.

00:00:03 Speaker 2

Hey guys. Jem here. Just to let you know on this week's podcast, some subjects may be sensitive to some and listeners discretion is advised.

00:00:19 Speaker 3

My parents weren't in your regular stereotypical 95 job. They were actually smuggling drugs into the country and selling them on the side in order to make money. And as life went on, my mum found faith and came to the church and I was at church one week. And whilst worship was on.

00:00:38 Speaker 3

I was singing in tongues and somebody had come up to my mum who was a Moroccan lady and said oh, I didn't realise. Leo. I spoke Moroccan and she said Ohh, he absolutely doesn't. And she said Oh well, he's singing glory to the king in Moroccan. When I was about 5 1/2 things took a bit of a drastic downward spiral.

00:00:58 Speaker 3

My dad was an only child, so these people that come with him had kind of become like adopted family.

00:01:03 Speaker 3

Really. And one of them in particular had a really good connection with my dad. They had always been best friends. And so he was living with us on the South Coast of England. And when I was 5 1/2, unbeknownst to me at the time, he had started to effectively groom me. I'm in so much pain.

00:01:22 Speaker 3

And I'm so scared because I don't feel like anyone else in the world can understand.

00:01:28 Speaker 3

And God said to me so distinctly I understand. I was there.

00:01:33 Speaker 3

And it was just this.

00:01:35 Speaker 3

Epiphany for me, at that moment in time I thought, wow, like?

00:01:40 Speaker 3

Somebody was there with me and when I was suffering through that stuff, maybe I wasn't completely alone, so I decided that that Sunday I was gonna get up and I was gonna go to church.

00:01:49 Speaker 3

And as I looked up and I saw her make contact.

00:01:54 Speaker 3

God said to me so heavily strongly. That's the woman you're going to marry.

00:02:17 Speaker 4

Welcome to Jesus studio. I'm here with and I'm ash and we're also here with Leroy, who is going to share his testimony today.

00:02:20

Jen.

00:02:26 Speaker 3

Hello guys. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. My name is Leroy. I live in a sunny town on the South side of England. I'm very happily married, one child and a dog, and yeah, I'm here today to just share the testimony with you life story.

00:02:41 Speaker 3

You guys and just a few things to mention off the offset, uh, whilst I was praying into this and thinking about the testimony situation.

00:02:50 Speaker 3

I really felt like God had said to me to include some of the worship songs that I really, really love that fit into certain points in my life and are relevant. So yeah, I'm gonna give a playlist to the guys and if you wanna listen along as we go through, I'll mention when the songs are relevant and come in.

00:03:04 Speaker 3

And that would be great.

00:03:08 Speaker 4

Good. That's really good. Yeah. Thanks, Leon. Good, great.

00:03:10 Speaker 3

Hi, Royce.

00:03:12 Speaker 3

OK, so perfectly leading into the first song, which is a song that's really close to my heart, and it feels quite fitting for today. It's my testimony by Elevation Worship that there's a particular rendition of that song on YouTube which I absolutely love. So that would be.

00:03:24 Speaker 3

The first thing.

00:03:26 Speaker 3

So I think to start with, it's best to go right back to the very beginning. And I came into the world.

00:03:32 Speaker 3

As most people do, 2 loving parents who I was born in Brighton at the Southlands Hospital and mum and Dad took me home and the beginning of my life.

00:03:41 Speaker 3

If.

00:03:42 Speaker 3

Was quite stereotypically normal, but it started to change quite rapidly in that I realised in order to be able to sustain a home and look after a child, my parents weren't in your regular stereotypical 9 to five job. They were actually smuggling drugs into the country and selling them on the side in order to make money.

00:04:02 Speaker 3

So my life started out, as most people do, but it very rapidly turned into.

00:04:08 Speaker 3

Chaos because my dad was also apprehended in court was coming into the country, so he ended up going to prison for a while at the beginning of my life. And so there were prison visits and all kinds of things happening. When I was a very small boy that were not your stereotypical things. And but I did have two parents that loved me, cared about me a lot. And so that was the very beginning.

00:04:29 Speaker 3

And as life went on, my mum found faith and came to the church and she was a sort of devout Christian, as you would say. So she used to take us to church every Sunday.

00:04:42 Speaker 3

And I wasn't really connected to the church as such. It was much more of your sort of being dragged up through the church. It wasn't something that I enjoyed as a kid, but I went nonetheless because it was the expectation, the family expectation and and all sorts of bizarre things have been said to me that happened in my childhood.

00:05:02 Speaker 3

I don't recall some of those things. One of the earliest things that my mum said was that I hadn't been talking for a very long time and and I was at church one week. And whilst worship was on.

00:05:15 Speaker 3

I was singing in tongues and somebody had come up to my mum who was a Moroccan lady and said, oh, I didn't realise. Leo. I spoke Moroccan and she said Ohh he absolutely doesn't. And she said Oh well, he's singing glory to the king in Moroccan and my mum said, Oh well, I don't know how on earth she said that must be a good moment because I don't know how on Earth he would be singing in.

00:05:35 Speaker 3

In Moroccans, so from a very young age, I think there was always a connection there to faith, even if it was more of a subconscious thing and I didn't really know what was happening at the time.

00:05:46 Speaker 3

But then, unfortunately, when I was about 5 1/2 things took a bit of a drastic downward spiral. My dad is South African and he had emigrated to the UK and when he came here he was accompanied by some friends and there was a few of them.

00:06:05 Speaker 3

Came together. My dad was an only child. So these people that had come with him had kind of become like adopted family, really. And one of them in particular had a really good connection with my dad. They had always been best friends. And so he was living with us on the South Coast of England in a little quaint house in Wow.

00:06:24 Speaker 3

Thing and when I was 5 1/2 announced to me at the time he had started to effectively groom me and it started off with buying me nice things and just paying me an interest in a way that other people weren't at the time and and just generally being a caring, loving person.

00:06:44 Speaker 3

Felt like at that point in time, but before I knew it, things were sort of shifting and he was getting me to do things that he knew.

00:06:53 Speaker 3

My parents wouldn't like, like, go into my dad's toolbox and get tools out, which you know wasn't something I was allowed to do, but it was sort of like our little secret. And so it started this bizarre relationship where I was doing things that were.

00:07:12 Speaker 3

Shady things that effectively my parents wouldn't be happy about and we were keeping them a secret, but that was the extent of it at that point in time.

00:07:19 Speaker 3

But before long.

00:07:22 Speaker 3

The line got crossed and it turned into sexual abuse and so at that point the grooming had developed, and now it was more sort of gifts of.

00:07:35 Speaker 3

Silence. I suppose you would call it so the things that he was doing before the kind of things that he was buying me, all of that sort of stuff, continued. But now he was sort of buying my silence and, you know, paying for.

00:07:47 Speaker 3

Me to not tell my parents what was happening, but it was really complicated because at that point in time it also felt because of the things that happened before in the grooming, I felt like I'd kind of already got myself into a bit of a rabbit hole because I'd done all these things that I knew my parents weren't going to be happy about. And so I didn't know how to get out. I I thought I've done so many.

00:08:06 Speaker 3

Things already up to this point.

00:08:08 Speaker 3

That it's too late for me to come clean and be honest. So I was completely trapped and and at that point in time, not long after it first started.

00:08:19 Speaker 3

My parents had decided that they wanted a fresh life. The life that they had here obviously had had some complications and my dad had been to prison and and they've been all kinds of chaos that had happened. And so they had decided that they were going to emigrate. And when they were thinking about places to go, they picked the South of.

00:08:37 Speaker 3

France so. So we pack.

00:08:39 Speaker 3

Up and we move to a farm over there and and unfortunately for me, the person that had started this abuse also moved with us. So we have moved out there and he had accompanied the family and come in as a sort of makeshift uncle. And so over the next six to seven years.

00:09:00 Speaker 3

The sexual abuse had continued on pretty much a daily basis and it stemmed to probably.

00:09:08 Speaker 3

The most extreme or worst case things that you can think of during that time frame, and it was a complete and utter roller coaster of things that happened and and there were threats involved. For my silence, it slowly shifted from being bought gifts to being told things that would happen.

00:09:28 Speaker 3

If I spoke out so he told me that he.

00:09:32 Speaker 3

New voodoo magic from where he'd grown up in South Africa and that he would curse my family and he would send, you know, dark forces to to come after me and those that I love so.

00:09:49 Speaker 3

During that time frame it it again became just impossible for me to talk out, and I felt very alone and isolated. I didn't. But all the while, I think there's something that's always been naturally in me. I'm quite gifted with.

00:10:02 Speaker 3

Sort of being a bit of chameleon and and wearing different faces so.

00:10:06 Speaker 3

I was quite capable of being able to cover the situation up and not signal to people that there was anything wrong, so this just continued. My life was quite miserable at that time and you know, we used to go out on these excursions for things like fishing trips, and there wasn't any fishing that happened during that time.

00:10:28 Speaker 3

At all. And then on the way home, he would stop at the supermarket and.

00:10:32 Speaker 3

By what would effectively be known as like a prize winning fish. I mean, you're not talking like the kind of fish that a child would catch. This is something that, you know, maybe rain is or someone would catch in a river and we would take that home and that would be something that you would show my parents to say, oh, you know, look what Leroy caught today.

00:10:48 Speaker 3

And my parents were just so proud. So it was. It was a really hard time because.

00:10:53 Speaker 3

There was the there was a nice side to some of my life at that point in time, but there was also a very dark side. But whilst living in France we used to come back quite regularly and visit family and friends in England and my grandparents owned a hotel on the South Coast of England in Worthing and it was called the Mayfair Hotel.

00:11:13 Speaker 3

And it was on Hein Terrace and we used to come back and visit them.

00:11:17 Speaker 3

And so when we used to come and do these visits, it was always a welcome break because my nan was.

00:11:24 Speaker 3

Probably my biggest hero in life, and she was a.

00:11:28 Speaker 3

Wrong.

00:11:30 Speaker 3

Fierce independent woman who?

00:11:33 Speaker 3

You know the way she carried herself, she was successful. She was a socialite. Everybody loved her. She was someone that I looked up to who gave me real, unconditional love, but also in a lot of ways, kept me safe. When I was with her, she was so besotted that she would spend as much time with me as she possibly could.

00:11:54 Speaker 3

So when we came back it it, it gave me somewhat of a respite from.

00:11:59 Speaker 3

The life that we had back in France and back at the farm.

00:12:04 Speaker 3

But sadly, even that got tainted because he used to travel with us when we came back and the first couple of times he scoped out the hotel and found a room that he thought would work best for the kind of activities that were happening.

00:12:22 Speaker 3

We were here and and that became the room that he then demanded to stay in pretty much every single time we came back, and it was directly opposite the lift on the very top floor. So the furthest possible place it could be away from people and. And so when we used to come back and visit again, it was beautiful times with my nan and.

00:12:42 Speaker 3

Then shrouded in this darkness of very severe sexual abuse and just the most horrific things that you could possibly think of, to be quite honest and and so part of all of that was.

00:12:56 Speaker 3

He ruled through fear, so I was absolutely petrified at all times and so scared of upsetting him because of the things that he would do. So to give an example, at one point when we were living in France, he had asked me to climb up the top of the haystack in the hay plant, which is something my dad was.

00:13:17 Speaker 3

Absolutely adamant we could never, ever do. Because it being so dangerous.

00:13:22 Speaker 3

And but he asked me to climb up there with him, and then we got to the top. He asked me to do some things that I didn't feel comfortable doing, and I didn't want to do. And so I said no, and he persisted and and continued to try and pressure me to do what I didn't want to do. But I stayed strong and said no. And so he kicked me off the top of the 16 foot haystack. And I compact.

00:13:42 Speaker 3

Compound fractured my arm in five places and he would do things.

00:13:47 Speaker 3

Through extreme force, just to keep me living in that perpetual cycle of fear, to make sure that I wasn't going to say anything. And so this was like a constant running thing in my life throughout that whole time period. And my mum was still at church. And I can remember.

00:14:06 Speaker 3

Still going to a church in France every week.

00:14:10 Speaker 3

And thinking.

00:14:12 Speaker 3

I don't know why this isn't stopping my mum's here. There were loads of people they used to. It was quite a a strong church. They had a strong fellowship, people gave out prophecies, people spoke in tongues. The spirit was really strong there and you know, people used to fall over in the spirit and get drunk on the spirit. So I can even at that age.

00:14:32 Speaker 3

I remember thinking, I don't know why this is being able to continue, but it did and so.

00:14:41 Speaker 3

We were there for about 7 years and throughout that entire time there was the abuse continued. Basically through that entire time then.

00:14:52 Speaker 3

My mum and my brother and sisters and I came back to England to visit my nan and we were told that my nan had a terminal diagnosis. She had been diagnosed with lung cancer and it was a very, very aggressive form. So.

00:15:11 Speaker 3

It was really difficult because the only person that I really had in my life at that point in time, the kind of beacon of light as it were, was my nan. So she was diagnosed and then she sadly died very, very quickly. So from diagnosis to death, it was maximum of few months, but she was.

00:15:30 Speaker 3

Absolutely determined that she wanted.

00:15:33 Speaker 3

To see the new millennia in so, she held out and held out, and then went into the year 2000 and sadly passed away on the 6th of January. And it wasn't long after that, maybe a matter of weeks that my dad had said to my mum that he had met somebody else and that he wanted a divorce.

00:15:52 Speaker 3

So my parents were then also getting divorced as well, but during that time where we had found out about my nan, it was bizarre because.

00:16:02 Speaker 3

So much changed in what was a very small short period of time I.

00:16:09 Speaker 3

Saw my Nan come to Jesus, which she never had before, so she gave her life to Christ and she started going to church and it was the first time in my life that I actually started to.

00:16:22 Speaker 3

See Jesus, because before that it was just something that had to do out of routine. I didn't really have much of A choice, but suddenly seeing this woman that I respected so much and loved so dearly, who was so unbelievably ill but was so devoted to Christ in the.

00:16:38 Speaker 3

Time and she used to love worship as well. So we both were huge on worship and that brings me to the second song, which is I could sing with your love forever by delirious. That was her favourite song.

00:16:51 Speaker 3

In her final days, and I distinctly remember a very clear image of she was so unbelievably sick that she was in a wheelchair. She couldn't walk. She couldn't, you know, she was really, really ill. And I remember her face lighting up when this song used to come on. And she always used to sing the the the line that was.

00:17:11 Speaker 3

And I I just feel like dancing. I know it's foolishness. I know. And that has stuck with me so distinctly from that time because she was in a wheelchair. But yeah.

00:17:22 Speaker 3

She was dancing in her soul, I think. I think she was. She was dancing. Just not in this realm because she was so close to the end of it all. I think she was dancing elsewhere. So I got baptised because she.

00:17:39 Speaker 3

Really connected with God and and that was something I think she wanted so that she knew that she was going to see me again. So I really wanted to see her again. She wanted to see me again. So I decided that I was gonna get baptised. So that was one of the last things that we kind of did was that I got baptised at church and then not long after that, she she passed away.

00:17:59 Speaker 3

But during that time as well, I remember that he had purchased for me a Game Boy with a Game Boy camera, another one of his silence gifts. And it had like a little printer with it. And my Nan was bedridden for weeks. But we just spent.

00:18:15 Speaker 3

Every hour of every day together, and I used to take photos on this Game Boy and print them out. And they weren't like the photos that you'd see today.

00:18:23 Speaker 3

They were like.

00:18:24 Speaker 3

Awful black and white, pixelated. You could barely make out the people there, but we were just taking photos together all day and just remembering this short period of time. But it was it was very special and I cherish it a lot.

00:18:37 Speaker 3

But then after she passed away.

00:18:40 Speaker 3

Life took another downward turn because my parents were getting divorced and my mum was really struggling to cope with losing her mum. She had a very, very strong relationship with her mum and they were so very close, so when my nan passed away my mum.

00:18:58 Speaker 3

Couldn't cope and so she said to my granddad one day, you know, I just need to go and let my hair down and just have a bit of time out of all the grief. And so would you mind having the kids so my granddad got like a babysitter. And I think from memory.

00:19:11 Speaker 3

And she went out for what was just supposed to be a night out on the town with some friends.

00:19:18 Speaker 3

But sadly, during that night out, she ended up taking a drug which would?

00:19:24 Speaker 3

Be the undoing of everything in our lives at that point in time. It was a drug that was strong enough that after taking it that one time.

00:19:33 Speaker 3

She spiralled into addiction, heavy addiction, the kind of addiction where you're living in just complete squalor. And we didn't really have much money. We didn't have much food and there wasn't really much of the time. I remember there being gas and electric on the metres. We had to do things like.

00:19:52 Speaker 3

Candles. The washing machine wouldn't run, so during that point in time we had to go to school in dirty school uniforms quite frequently. And and I remember going out and thinking.

00:20:08 Speaker 3

Somebody here has, my mum was tapped out. My dad had left with this other woman and wasn't present. And and there wasn't really anyone to look after us, so I decided that maybe I had to step up. I didn't really have much choice, so I didn't really have much facility to get money. I was only sort of 1314 at the time.

00:20:28 Speaker 3

And but I decided that I would go out and start shoplifting to just get food to try and feed us at home. And so I used to go out in the mornings to places like Iceland with a few friends, and we would try and steal things like packets of bacon and loaves of bread to make bacon.

00:20:43 Speaker 3

Sandwiches and some of your food staples like rice and pasta. And. And we did this for a while until eventually I was arrested for the shoplifting and absolutely petrified the hell out of me. I was so scared. I really thought I was going to go to prison. And even though it's the first time offence and the officers kept telling me it was.

00:21:05 Speaker 3

It was mine. I was so unbelievably scared, and I think a lot of the fear from being under an authority for so long crept back in and it was that that in that moment, that childlike fear.

00:21:17 Speaker 3

That it's completely irrational, so unbelievably overwhelming. And so I was petrified. So they took me to the police station and on the way there, the officers were so unbelievably lovely and they were asking me questions, and I was really apologetic. And I just said, you know, it was only food and.

00:21:35 Speaker 3

The user actually went back to the shop and I got banned from Iceland in in Worthing but they didn't. They decided not to press charges because he went back and explained the circumstances and he said, you know, they were gonna let me off with a with a.

00:21:48 Speaker 3

Portion and just to make sure that I didn't do this again and that if I needed help and support, I could go to social services and speak to them, which was something that I was never going to do because we were all so scared that we'd lost so much in our lives up until that point in time that the thought of being taken away from our mum felt like the.

00:22:08 Speaker 3

Absolute worst thing in the world. It was like our whole world had been turned upside down and and so on. One hand, you're in this place where you're absolutely desperate for somebody to come in and help. But on the flip side.

00:22:23 Speaker 3

It's just the thought of somebody coming in and helping feels absolutely petrifying. So we're living in East Worthing at this point in time, in complete and utter squalor. The houses, effectively a drug, then to be 100% honest with you and and suddenly.

00:22:44 Speaker 3

One day out of nowhere, my dad shows up and and so we haven't seen him for, gosh, months, if not a couple of years at this point and he shows up on the doorstep and he is absolutely furious.

00:23:00 Speaker 3

About the conditions that we are living in and and so he says to my mum, I'm going to take the kids back to France for just a holiday. You need to get your act together and then I'll bring them back. So my mom.

00:23:14 Speaker 3

Said, well, my.

00:23:16 Speaker 3

OK, fine. But my youngest sister was really just.

00:23:20 Speaker 3

Thought and very, very upset. So my mum said she's she's not gonna go, you know, she's gonna stay here and.

00:23:27 Speaker 3

And justice to touch on a point from another thing that happened in France. My mum had got pregnant with my youngest sister and and whilst she was pregnant, had found out that she had a very aggressive form of cancer, ovarian cancer and at that point in time.

00:23:46 Speaker 3

Another example of something that was said to me during that point in time was that and this kind of solidified the whole voodoo movement situation was that my parents hadn't told me yet as a child what was actually happening, but obviously being an adult he was aware and he came to me and said that because.

00:24:04 Speaker 3

I wasn't complicit in what he wanted me to do, that he had made my mum sick, but as long as I did all the things that he asked me from this point going forward, he had the power to undo it. So a few days later my parents told me that my mum was really ill and that it was.

00:24:21 Speaker 3

Very, very serious. And so I remember even at that age, I think when the kind of things are happening to you that were happening to me.

00:24:31 Speaker 3

I think you have to grow up really fast. And so I was quite aware probably more aware than some children that age would be of certain things. So when it was explained to me what was going on and I was aware of how serious it was, I thought I have to do anything and everything I possibly can to undo this. So for a few months.

00:24:51 Speaker 3

And I just blindly did anything that you asked me to do.

00:24:56 Speaker 3

And then one day he came back and gave me the news that he'd taken it away. And, you know, again, literally within a matter of days, my parents said that the the cancer, the operation that my mum had had was successful and the cancer had been removed. And she was in remission. So in my head, I fully fully believed that this voodoo magic that he had hold of.

00:25:16 Speaker 3

With.

00:25:17 Speaker 3

Not just scary, but, but terrifying. He was able to do things that were out of this world beyond the mortal realm. So anyway, jumping back to where we were, my sister and my mum had a really strong bond because you know, my mum always said that my sister was almost responsible for saving her life because had she not been pregnant.

00:25:37 Speaker 3

The cancer was so aggressive that it would have probably claimed her life, so she was having a complete and utter meltdown and didn't want to go to my mom said she was gonna stay. So my dad said fine, she can stay. I'll take the other three back to front.

00:25:53 Speaker 3

So we went with my dad somewhat reluctantly, because at that point he was a heavy alcoholic and he was drinking in excess every single day. And and my dad is a very different person when he's drunk, he can be the most loving, caring.

00:26:12 Speaker 3

Affectionate father all time. But when he's drunk, he turns into someone very, very.

00:26:16 Speaker 3

Different and all of us, I think universally struggle with that. So it was equally exciting to see my dad, but also petrifying the idea that we were going away with him for a whole week and that we weren't gonna be seeing Mum. But it was even more petrifying than I realised because we had this lovely time travelling down through France with my dad, and we did several.

00:26:37 Speaker 3

Stops and went to see some sights and we visited theme parks, had a generally lovely time, and then we got back to the house. And as we pulled into the driveway, stood on the porch of the house, waving excitedly to see me.

00:26:53 Speaker 3

Was this person and and the abuse just picked up exactly where it left off, so he immediately took me off and just continued everything that had stopped months before, continued there and then in that moment. So that probably ended up being about two weeks was.

00:27:12 Speaker 3

Absolutely torturous. And and we were having.

00:27:17 Speaker 3

A very difficult time because my dad was still drinking and so being with my dad, although it was fun.

00:27:24 Speaker 3

We always felt an edge when he was drunk, so it was quite we we were really on tender hooks anyway and and and then on the flip side of that was this other completely, utterly soul destroying situation that was happening on the outskirts so.

00:27:39

We were there.

00:27:39 Speaker 3

For a couple of weeks until eventually I managed to get to a phone and ring my mum and just say to her mum. Please, please please come.

00:27:48 Speaker 3

So.

00:27:49 Speaker 3

She immediately jumped into a car, came down through France with a couple of her friends, and they came and rescued us and brought us home and. And so we went back to England and believe it or not, we're so excited and happy to be back in the house that just two weeks ago felt like a complete and utter nightmare.

00:28:10 Speaker 3

But we were there and it was a couple of months later that my mum came into my bedroom and she looked quite emotional and was quite upset. And I said to her mum, what what's going on? And she said.

00:28:24 Speaker 3

I need to tell you something and it's going to make you sad. And I said OK and she said that this person who had been abusing me all these years had been caught with some drugs coming into the country and had gone to prison.

00:28:36 Speaker 3

And I remember at the time feeling like.

00:28:40 Speaker 3

This is my opportunity. I'm going to have to. I'm safe. He's in prison. I have to say now what's happened. So I immediately burst into tears and my mum said to me, it's OK, it's OK. I said no, you don't understand. She said no, it's fine, it's fine. I said no, you don't understand. I need to tell you something. So she.

00:28:58 Speaker 3

Then looked at me and.

00:29:00 Speaker 3

I told her what had happened since.

00:29:03 Speaker 3

About.

00:29:04 Speaker 3

Five 5 1/2 years old. What had happened up until that point, so she was absolutely distraught, you know, obviously. And she called my dad.

00:29:13 Speaker 3

My dad was distraught and he immediately jumped on a ferry and came back and we all sort of sat as a family and they said to me, you know what, what do you want to do going forward? What? What do you want to do now? And I said I just.

00:29:24 Speaker 3

I need him to never be in my life again. I I just want to end that. So they decided that the best course of action if I was happy to do it, was to go through the police. So we said, yeah, let's absolutely do it. So I was about 12:13 at the time and we called the police and we started the lengthy process.

00:29:44 Speaker 3

Of hours and hours and hours of video statements about what had happened over that 6-7 year per.

00:29:51 Speaker 3

And it took weeks. They used to come to the house and they would set up a little video camera and then they would sit me there and they would ask me, they would ask me to to recall events and tell them things that had happened and then would ask me questions to dive further into that stuff. And then several weeks later.

00:30:10 Speaker 3

There was a knock on the door and they just said that because of how the law was at the time, they decided that there was going to be no further.

00:30:19 Speaker 3

And that they were just leaving it there. So UMI was absolutely petrified. And one of the only questions that I had for them and and asked them repeatedly was.

00:30:30 Speaker 3

Have you arrested him? Have you arrested him? And they kept fluffing about and trying to, you know, cover the situation. And I said no, please have you arrested him.

00:30:37 Speaker 3

And.

00:30:37 Speaker 3

They said to us, well, no, we haven't, because there's a lack of evidence and immediately I felt like a weight had been lifted because I was so scared that he was going to know that I'd spoken out and that nothing was being done about it and that he was going to send these voodoo doctors.

00:30:51 Speaker 3

After me and and and all this.

00:30:52 Speaker 3

Fear came flooding.

00:30:53 Speaker 3

Through, but as soon as they said to me that they hadn't spoken to him, that you didn't know that I'd spoken out.

00:30:58 Speaker 3

It was immediately like a breath of fresh air, so I was like, OK, well, I don't care then it is what it is. And that sent me into a really dark hole. And I think I just became really angry at the world that everyone in general and we were still living in the same set of circumstances that we were before.

00:31:18 Speaker 3

And but something shifted in me and I have been horrifically bullied because people knew that my mum was a drug addict and I used to go to school in dirty clothes. And so I I'd been bullied for years and all of a sudden I decided that it was time to fight back. So I became quite aggressive.

00:31:35 Speaker 3

With I was just really angry. Not the person that I've always been and not the person I know myself to be. It was a shell of me, but it was just, I think, a a coping mechanism. I was very much in fight or flight.

00:31:48 Speaker 3

And not long after that whole situation.

00:31:52 Speaker 3

Forward a couple of years.

00:31:55 Speaker 3

Social services finally had caught wind.

00:32:00 Speaker 3

Of the conditions that we were living in at home and they came and intervened and we were taken into foster care and and so they came and collected me from school one day and they explain.

00:32:12 Speaker 3

And that we wouldn't be going home because my mum wasn't very well and that she needed some support and that they were gonna put us in a foster care system. And we had all decided my brother and sisters and I that we would prefer to go to my auntie's house. And so they rang my auntie and uncle and said, you know, would you be willing to have the kids?

00:32:32 Speaker 3

They said oh, absolutely, of course.

00:32:36 Speaker 3

And the world had got around about what had happened, because my parents had spoken to people and, you know, obviously people were made aware that knew this person.

00:32:48 Speaker 3

And it's really complicated, but there was a lot of disbelief, but I took that as not believing me. So people were in disbelief that they had been fooled by this person, and this person could be the person that they were. But to me, as the person that I was at the time, I had taken that very personally as well. So the fact that my auntie and uncle had said that they wanted us there.

00:33:11 Speaker 3

I struggled with that a bit from the offset because I felt like people had a certain image.

00:33:16 Speaker 3

Me and they didn't believe what had happened and that I was lying or making up stories or trying to cause trouble. So from the very beginning I I felt a bit uneasy about the situation, but I felt like it was better to go there than it was to go into a random foster home. So they got some of our.

00:33:36 Speaker 3

Stuff from the house and and we got sent to live there. And after being there for a a few months and.

00:33:46 Speaker 3

Social services came to the house and they had a conversation with me and I've I've spoken about this since and it seems like there must have been a clerical error of some kind, but it had been decided that I was going to be moved from my auntie and uncles into a different foster home on my own, which?

00:34:05 Speaker 3

At that point in time, I.

00:34:08 Speaker 3

Didn't know how to cope with at all, and the only thing that I really had any kind of stability with in my life at that point in time was being with my siblings. So the fact that we were then getting split up and I was getting moved, my auntie and uncle at the time lived in Shoreham and and I was getting moved more sort of all the way over the other side of Worthing to sort of.

00:34:28 Speaker 3

By Durrington and and obviously being the agent I was, I couldn't drive. I didn't have any form of transport, so I remember at the time thinking I was absolutely petrified and not knowing how I was going to be able to see my brother and sisters at all.

00:34:43 Speaker 3

Which transferred to be a bit of an issue. I used to have to the first thing my foster parents did. My foster family were absolutely lovely and one of the first things they said was that they were going to buy me a bike so that I had a bit of transport. So I used to be able to ride straight from school to east Rolling train station, get on the train, ride the train to Shoreham.

00:35:04 Speaker 3

Then ride my bike all the way to the house. I could spend an hour and 20 minutes there and then I would have to ride back in order to be home for tea. So I did that multiple days of the week just to be able to see my siblings. And again my foster parents were great because they without question just bought me the tickets and.

00:35:22 Speaker 3

So yeah, that was.

00:35:24 Speaker 3

Another really difficult time. It was hard because.

00:35:28 Speaker 3

Being isolated was really tough.

00:35:32 Speaker 3

I was still carrying a lot of the demons of what had happened.

00:35:36 Speaker 3

And I've been moved to foster care, which took me out of my comfort zone of the area that I knew. And I had friends there. I moved away, and I was nowhere near my friends. And then I moved back, and I was still nowhere near my friends. But I was also now nowhere near family either, so it was just a really difficult.

00:35:54 Speaker 3

Tough time.

00:35:57 Speaker 3

But the foster family were great and they were really loving and they were very kind and they tried to do everything they possibly could to facilitate and support me in every way. And and they were absolutely brilliant. They took me in as part of the family.

00:36:13 Speaker 3

Which is weird because.

00:36:16 Speaker 3

I found that so difficult my family environment had been so up and down up until then, and obviously I've been living in.

00:36:26 Speaker 3

A very different.

00:36:27 Speaker 3

Environment.

00:36:28 Speaker 3

To normal, so suddenly them being put in an environment where people were behaving in what would be a stereotypically normal family, it made me feel really on edge as well. So even though it was a good thing, I just didn't know how to receive that in any way. So I was there for just over a year and.

00:36:48 Speaker 3

And then social services had said that my mum had been through rehab and that she was doing really well and that we have facility to move back to my mum's place. And so it was, like, super excited. They said that it was gonna be like a stage thing. So we would be doing visits first on weekends and then one.

00:37:07 Speaker 3

And they felt that it was OK and my mum was stable. Then we could all move back to be with mum. So we did that for a while. I remember coming up every single weekend to visit my mum in Bournemouth.

00:37:19 Speaker 3

And she was like, much more back to her old mum again. You know, she obviously wasn't on drugs anymore. And she had got herself a nice little flat and, like, quite a nice little.

00:37:31 Speaker 3

Area and so we used to come down and stay and we used to do fun stuff like watch movies and have popcorn and do the kind of things that families do that we hadn't done for a long, long time and and that resulted eventually in us being sent back to live with mum.

00:37:47 Speaker 3

Which was great, but there was one critical issue with that and that is that mum was living in effectively A1.

00:37:52 Speaker 3

Had flat, so there was suddenly five of us living in very, very close quarters. The flat had one bedroom, a lounge, a kitchen. What was effectively, I suppose, a walking wardrobe, but we turned it into a box bedroom and a bathroom. That was literally it. So the box bedroom Mum said that I could have that and she bought me like a high rise.

00:38:15 Speaker 3

Red, you could barely even open the door because the room was so small, but it just gave me a bit of my own space and. And so we lived in there for a while before finally being able to move into a house. And when I first moved back here, I think my mum.

00:38:33 Speaker 3

Knew that there is definitely a lot of demons in the closet, and I started a course a college course, and I was encouraged by one of the workers there who used to be a connections worker and that maybe it would be a good idea for me to do some therapy. And I thought.

00:38:51 Speaker 3

Absolutely not. There's no way I wouldn't know how to talk about this. I wouldn't know what to say.

00:38:58 Speaker 3

And I just felt so petrified of the judgments of people, because before I had so misinterpreted the disbelief as not believing me, I felt like I just didn't want to have to deal with that. But one day a guy came in to the college place and he was telling us all about mental health, and it was like an educational class.

00:39:18 Speaker 3

But he happened to be a counsellor and the guy's name was Chris and he was blind.

00:39:24 Speaker 3

And I started talking to him at.

00:39:25 Speaker 3

The end of the session.

00:39:27 Speaker 3

And things just started falling out and I couldn't control it. And he said I would really like to give you some counselling. And and I said, no, I, there's, I, I have no facility to afford that. And he said no, no, absolutely no payment. I just want to give you some sessions. So I started seeing this guy and I think.

00:39:47 Speaker 3

In the weirdest way. It was a divine moment because.

00:39:52 Speaker 3

I felt adamantly that I didn't want to do therapy, and I was so scared of the judgements and then suddenly.

00:39:59 Speaker 3

A blind therapist came in and the peace that I felt knowing that he wasn't going to be looking at me.

00:40:05 Speaker 3

And didn't know what I looked like. It gave me this like blanket this anonymity blanket.

00:40:12 Speaker 3

So I really feel like that was a divine moment. God had definitely placed me at that place and that man at that place because.

00:40:22 Speaker 3

That was the start of a huge change for me. I started doing the therapy. I used to go there and spill my heart out for an hour. It was gruelling. It was intense. It was so hard. I was telling this person things.

00:40:40 Speaker 3

That I'd never told anyone in my entire life, other than the police before and just really bearing myself.

00:40:47 Speaker 3

And I only got more comfortable as I bumped into him out in the street and he had no idea that I was there and I just felt so secure in the fact that I could go there and be completely authentically me. And I told him.

00:41:00 Speaker 3

The hurt, the pain, the things that I had done that I wasn't proud of, the fights, the hurting people.

00:41:08 Speaker 3

Just the things that I did that were not very nice and and even down to stealing food and the fact that, you know, I felt awful for doing these things in my life, but I didn't feel like I had a choice. And he was so.

00:41:22 Speaker 3

Kind and you know, non non judgmental in any which way. And so affirming in the things that he said and.

00:41:30 Speaker 3

And again, another common running theme he used to say nice things to me, which I found really really hard because the views I had of myself as this broken individual, I didn't feel like I had any worth and. And so it was another thing that he always closed the session off with a word of affirmation, something positive at the end. And he would recall.

00:41:50 Speaker 3

Something that I've said and he'd say, you know, I I think it's so insightful that you have.

00:41:53 Speaker 3

That view and that you've managed to notice that, and I I remember walking out feeling really I have these like amazing life changing sessions. And then I walk out feeling so frustrated and annoyed and irritated that he'd said something nice. And just think, you know, why can he just not do that? Why can't it be that we just end the session and leave? But it it was like part of his ethos. He did this every time.

00:42:14 Speaker 3

So I went and saw.

00:42:15 Speaker 3

Him.

00:42:16 Speaker 3

And after spending 16 sessions seeing Chris.

00:42:22 Speaker 3

I had processed a lot of what had happened.

00:42:26 Speaker 3

And there was something niggling in me that missing the the cliche stereotypical missing puzzle piece. I knew that there was something missing in my life. I didn't know what that was.

00:42:36 Speaker 3

But I wanted to try and find it.

00:42:40 Speaker 3

And I kept being pulled back to go to the church.

00:42:44 Speaker 3

Go to the church.

00:42:47 Speaker 3

And I still had good understanding of church and and religious life because I'd lived that for so long, even though I didn't feel I felt completely disconnected. But I knew the I knew the process, so I remember that I started praying. I just started praying one day and.

00:43:03 Speaker 3

Calling out and just saying, you know, I'm in so much pain.

00:43:09 Speaker 3

And I'm so scared because I don't feel like anyone else in the world can understand.

00:43:16 Speaker 3

Other than me and the person that was doing.

00:43:17 Speaker 3

It what had happened?

00:43:19 Speaker 3

And God said to me so distinctly I understand. I was there.

00:43:24 Speaker 3

And it was.

00:43:25 Speaker 3

Just this epiphany for me at that moment in time I thought, wow, like?

00:43:31 Speaker 3

Somebody was there with me and when I was suffering through that stuff, maybe I wasn't completely alone, so I decided that that Sunday I was gonna get up and.

00:43:38 Speaker 3

I was gonna go to church.

00:43:42 Speaker 3

But I didn't.

00:43:43 Speaker 3

I decided that instead of that, because that could never be the answer I was going to try and find a different route and and it led me through some really difficult times. I went to really dark places. I was not happy. I struggled heavily with suicidal ideation.

00:44:04 Speaker 3

I had numerous suicide attempts and eventually it led to be being put on medication, so there was psychiatric involved.

00:44:12 Speaker 3

And and they diagnosed me with post traumatic stress disorder relating to the abuse that had happened and they diagnosed me with obsessive compulsive disorder and an anxiety disorder as well. So they decided that because of the risk to myself that it would be much safer to just intervene very, very quickly.

00:44:32 Speaker 3

And and put me on meds. So once the meds had kicked in though, and I had a bit more.

00:44:37 Speaker 3

City and and my anxiety levels weren't as high as they were, and I I was still living this really ritualistic life my whole life had become routine at this point. But when things settle down a little bit, I did finally come back round to this idea of going to church. So I decided, and this time I wanted to make a bigger commitment.

00:44:58 Speaker 3

That I told other people that I would go and the kind of people that I knew were gonna prompt me if I didn't show up. Whereas before it was much more of a solo thing. I kind of spread it out and and gave myself some accountability that I really wanted to do this. And I think if I mention it to other people, I'm more likely to and learn how I did.

00:45:16 Speaker 3

So I went to church that week and I.

00:45:21 Speaker 3

Just cried. I didn't. I I don't remember that service at all. I.

00:45:25 Speaker 3

Just sat.

00:45:26 Speaker 3

At the back of the church and I just cried for probably 90 minutes and and I remember I looked up.

00:45:38 Speaker 3

And there was no one there. Everybody had left. But a couple of people and my family and I looked up and thought that was intense. But those tears, it was like a floodgate of emotion that had been held up inside me for so long. And I had this epiphany in my head of, like, I don't remember.

00:45:58 Speaker 3

And I last cried like that, like I had never in years and years and years expressed emotion in that way. It was like this. Cork popped off the bottle and all this stuff that I've been holding together because The thing is as well is when you're conditioned over such a long period of time.

00:46:17 Speaker 3

Your brain just automatically, subconsciously does these things, so I would slip into these different faces and and wear different masks to fit into different things. And none of that was conscious choice. It just happened. I didn't choose for it to happen, but as a sub part of that.

00:46:32 Speaker 3

The authentic me who I really was didn't really have much of A place because that person was so vulnerable, so I was protecting myself with all these other faces.

00:46:42 Speaker 3

And if I could mimic behaviours or fit in, then people didn't question too much about under the surface stuff. So a lot of my relationships were very superficial. But it just also meant that I wasn't feeling these, like, very real emotions. And over the next week, before the next church service.

00:47:02 Speaker 3

I processed so much information, I cried for hours about my Nan dying and just coming to terms with.

00:47:12 Speaker 3

Losing someone so significant who up until that point of her death as well, had been like a core part of our lives. Anytime there was a crisis, people always turned to my man for help. She was the person that would just come in, and no matter how big or gargantuas this problem was, she would come in and fix it.

00:47:31 Speaker 3

And when we?

00:47:32 Speaker 3

Lost her? We lost a huge part of that, but suddenly I was discovering.

00:47:37 Speaker 3

This other.

00:47:38

Route.

00:47:38 Speaker 3

To having someone come and help with these bigger problems and I didn't know how significant that was yet at the time. But I remember thinking that I could. Somebody had explained to me at the church that because I've reacted so heavily, I suppose that you could pass stuff to God, you could pass stuff over. And I I never knew that. So it was like through prayer.

00:47:57 Speaker 3

Started saying, you know, Lord, you know, I passed this to you and I I need your help and how how can I process this and I started to open a channel of communication which I had never had in my life up until that point. And and I cried and cried and cried and felt emotion and.

00:48:15 Speaker 3

Anger and frustration and disappointment and resentment. And it was such a rollercoaster. And I also remember at that time feeling so angry with God about what had happened. I was infuriated about what had happened and how long it had taken.

00:48:35 Speaker 3

For this stuff to stop.

00:48:37 Speaker 3

But it didn't stop me going back to church because I thought if I'm going to be.

00:48:40 Speaker 3

This angry about?

00:48:41 Speaker 3

It I need to learn more it it. It's like a blind rage at the moment. I'm aiming this rage somewhere.

00:48:48 Speaker 3

And I need to go and unpack and understand and learn more before I can really process and feel these feelings. So I went back to church the next week.

00:48:57 Speaker 3

And I went the next week and the next week and the next week, and I carried on going for months. And I met some people who were amazing. You know, the church family that I developed were incredible over a short period of time.

00:49:13 Speaker 3

I think my mum had spoken of the kids so they knew of us but they didn't know us so it was the most bizarre thing because I'm walking into a room for the strangers. I don't know anybody, but everybody knows me and everybody has been waiting for me to arrive. So you walk in and there's celebration and you're going.

00:49:33 Speaker 3

Wow. And then you're showered with love and people were praying for me and I felt.

00:49:42 Speaker 3

Like I had a community which for a lot of my life I had lived quite in solitary because I was so scared of what had happened and how that could get out and what people might think of me, that I was deliberately withdrawn. And the more I withdrew, the more I became more insular. I think my mental health was suffering and I was I was just in a really bad way. So I gained stuck in a bit of a rut. I didn't know how to get out of that.

00:50:03 Speaker 3

Place and then suddenly I had walked into.

00:50:05 Speaker 3

You a kind of pop-up community with people that weren't judging me. They weren't, you know, they didn't in in a nice and positive way. They didn't care about what had happened. I had this obsession that if people knew what had happened to me, they would think, you know, feelings guilt, shame and all of that came in. They would have these thoughts about me. But these people weren't interested in that. They were interested in me.

00:50:28 Speaker 3

And the life that I had, but I still found it really hard to be authentically myself. But I went and.

00:50:35 Speaker 3

I was committed and I wanted to learn more, so the offer of going to new wine came up and my mum had said, oh, you know, there's this big Christian festival that happens once a year. And would you like to go? And it was 2010, and I had been a Christian for six weeks and I said, yeah, definitely.

00:50:55 Speaker 3

Let's do it. So we went on this crazy adventure of heading out.

00:51:01 Speaker 3

To new wine.

00:51:02 Speaker 3

And whilst I was there I developed some really strong bonds with more people from the church and I think I hadn't realised at the time that these kind of encounters. I think anyone who's in faith will tell you that the spirit just moves different when there's a lot of people who are universally there worshipping.

00:51:24 Speaker 3

The spirit touches down and it was just an insane experience and whilst I was there the fire that I had for God in my belly just grew and grew and grew and I was worshipping and praying and attending these seminars and learning so much stuff and still to this day I had not read a single.

00:51:44 Speaker 3

Page of the Bible.

00:51:45 Speaker 3

Not a single page I tried so hard to get into Genesis.

00:51:50 Speaker 3

And I am not a big reader and it it I found it difficult, but I was having these scriptures pop into my head which felt like gobbledygook. I hadn't ever heard of a book called Hebrews or a book.

00:52:01 Speaker 3

Called Psalms or Job.

00:52:03 Speaker 3

Or whatever it was, and suddenly I'm hearing these scriptures, you know, Matthew and I'm reading these scriptures and they felt so.

00:52:10 Speaker 3

Apt to the things that I had going on.

00:52:12 Speaker 3

At the time.

00:52:14 Speaker 3

So my life was taking a very different turn. And then one day it was the Wednesday, every single Wednesday at new wine. The church did like a BBQ day, and it was a day of just sort of coming together. And it was a day off at the event. So everyone got together. We did BBQ food, we played rounders. We just had general fun.

00:52:32 Speaker 3

And we were sat there talking. And I remember I was chatting with the pastor of the church, and we were eating a burger. And I looked up and I saw a girl dragging A suitcase across the field.

00:52:43 Speaker 3

And as I looked up and I saw her and made contact, God said to me so heavily strongly.

00:52:53 Speaker 3

That's the woman you're going to marry. And I remember thinking, I've never seen this girl before, and it just seems nuts to me, but I really get this urge that this girl is the girl that I'm gonna marry. And God was really heavily putting up my heart. This the girl that you're gonna marry. So for the next couple of days, I.

00:53:12 Speaker 3

Try to figure out who this girl was. How does she know? People at the church? I've never seen her before. She's never.

00:53:19 Speaker 3

And it turned out that I knew her parents very, very well as part of the church, so we didn't really chat much that week despite best efforts. But after that, we had finished and we went back to the normal church life we had.

00:53:39 Speaker 3

Brush past each other and through my efforts of trying to get to know her.

00:53:45 Speaker 3

And my complete and utter social awkwardness at the time.

00:53:48 Speaker 3

I said to her, don't be a hermit. Add me on.

00:53:51 Speaker 3

Facebook.

00:53:52 Speaker 3

And learn. Behold, it worked. She went home. She immediately added me on Facebook and we started chatting. And the next thing the ball just rolled. And before I knew it, we were talking for hours every.

00:54:03 Speaker 3

Day on the.

00:54:03 Speaker 3

Phone we had so much in common. It was just nuts. Like the relationship went from nothing.

00:54:10 Speaker 3

To this beautiful flourishing thing really quickly and.

00:54:16 Speaker 3

And it was surreal. It was crazy and something like out of a Hollywood movie and the kind of thing that you don't think really exists in real life. But I was living it. So there was times that knew wine where I would pray and pray and pray about where my life was going to go and pray for understanding.

00:54:36 Speaker 3

About what had happened.

00:54:40 Speaker 3

And there was a couple of things that I said to God whilst I was there and I said, you know, Father, I am ready to completely commit myself and walk the spiritual journey and I will commit my life to the Kingdom. But I just have to understand two things. There's just two things that I know in myself, my worldly.

00:54:59 Speaker 3

Self I can't let go of this. I can't understand.

00:55:02 Speaker 3

Why did this happen to me and why didn't you stop it? I I just don't understand these two things. My mum was in the church and so I prayed and prayed and prayed about it. And I remember one day it knew wine. It rained heavily, and the the field was turned into a bit of a bog. So I sat in my tent all day and I used to write Christian rap music. And I.

00:55:23 Speaker 3

I wrote some lyrics to a song, started writing some lyrics to a song and and I was praying and praying and praying and then a worship song came on on my.

00:55:33 Speaker 3

Phone and and it was let it rain by Jesus culture and it just touched my heart. I felt really connected as this song played to God. There was just something really special about that moment and I didn't understand it fully at the time, but I just knew that this song had touched me in the most profound way.

00:55:53 Speaker 3

And so the other thing was through prayer in that tent. I sat there and also said.

00:56:00 Speaker 3

I don't understand how somebody can do such cruel things to somebody else. I know that there are horrible things that happen in the world, but over that seven-year period, the things that I had experienced and see.

00:56:14 Speaker 3

Was so horrendous, I just didn't know how somebody else.

00:56:20 Speaker 3

Could do that to another person, so I also poured that out and you know, I said to God, I just don't understand how this can happen and and how.

00:56:27 Speaker 3

Somebody could do.

00:56:28 Speaker 3

That, and I remember that evening there was a a prophecy session and it was a church from somewhere in the UK. I can't remember where, but they had.

00:56:36 Speaker 3

Brought their youth.

00:56:37 Speaker 3

Group to the main tent and they were.

00:56:39 Speaker 3

Doing these prophecy.

00:56:40 Speaker 3

Sessions. So you could go in and there was 2 youth and an adult chaperone and they would come and give you some prophecy. And and I had gone down just to kind of see what it was.

00:56:52 Speaker 3

All about and and I was stood sort of mingling on the outside and not really part of the main thing. I just wanted to watch and see because I hadn't really seen a profession before before.

00:57:00 Speaker 3

It was a.

00:57:01 Speaker 3

1st to me and as I was stood there, I felt someone put their hand on my shoulder and I turned around and there.

00:57:07 Speaker 3

Was a guy.

00:57:07 Speaker 3

Smiling. And there was 2 youth there and he said Ohh they've come up and said they have a prophecy.

00:57:12 Speaker 3

For you, so I remember immediately feeling absolutely petrified like Oh my goodness and and so.

00:57:21 Speaker 3

At the time, they said to me.

00:57:25 Speaker 3

That they had had an image and the image was of a man who had meant to do me great harm.

00:57:33 Speaker 3

And he had a demon on his shoulder with its finger in his ear. So I had only been praying about that that day.

00:57:44 Speaker 3

But it felt so profound to me because I immediately knew that that is how somebody could do something so dark to somebody. This was a person who was being LED astray by a very dark force. And that is how they could do something so profoundly dark to somebody else. So I was absolutely petrified as soon as they said it to me.

00:58:05 Speaker 3

I remember not even saying anything to them. I was just like, Oh my goodness. I've gotta go. And I just ran out the the the main marquee went back to my tent, laid there, absolutely petrified again. Just cried for hours trying to understand.

00:58:19 Speaker 3

And I realised that there was something else. There was another blockage in my heart, which was that I didn't understand.

00:58:26 Speaker 3

I didn't understand God's interest in me at that point. I thought there's hundreds of Christians here.

00:58:31 Speaker 3

And these people have come and given me a prophecy and I there's people.

00:58:34 Speaker 3

Here that I knew were on.

00:58:36 Speaker 3

Fire for God. They had gifts, plenty of gifts, and they could change the world. And I just felt like this broken mess of a person that had no value and I couldn't understand why God was singling me out and giving me this prophecy.

00:58:51 Speaker 3

But he did so in amongst all of that, I also felt a little bit of scepticism. If I'm 100% honest because I had heard of things like this happening in the church. But I hadn't witnessed stuff like this happening first hand. So when I prayed about it that day, gone to the property session and then someone had come and given me this picture, which.

00:59:10 Speaker 3

Very much to me, seemingly confirmed an answer to what I prayed about earlier that day. It freaked me out and I just didn't understand. I was like, well, this is the kind of thing you hear about happened to somebody at some mad revival somewhere, but it had just happened to me in my actual, normal everyday life. So I felt a bit sceptical. But there is no.

00:59:28 Speaker 3

Oh, I had that was an intimate moment between me and God, and I hadn't mentioned that to anybody else. So.

00:59:35 Speaker 3

Although there is there is this internal battle, the rationalisation to me continually was, but I haven't told anyone so I've had this insane experience and I haven't told anyone so.

00:59:45

The new line.

00:59:46 Speaker 3

Played out other things that happened while we were there. I prayed for a lady. She fell over in the spirit, scared the hell out of me. I left the marquee and just.

00:59:54 Speaker 3

Went and spoke to my mum and was like.

00:59:56 Speaker 3

It's really weird things just happened. She was like, what's happened? I said I was praying for a woman. She fell on the floor. She was, oh, she was hit by the spirit. That never happened to me before, so I was completely petrified, didn't know what the.

01:00:05 Speaker 3

Was going on, but I got through this week and then I came back and normal life resumed. But it was normal life now. It was slightly different because I was talking to this.

01:00:14 Speaker 3

Girl who?

01:00:16 Speaker 3

Was incredible.

01:00:18 Speaker 3

So we developed a relationship and things were going incredibly. I was working in a job at the time that wasn't.

01:00:25 Speaker 3

The most amazing job, but I've held it for a number of years and it was just, you know, normal life had resumed. I got back into the the rigmarole of normal life and we started to develop a relationship and we started to date.

01:00:39 Speaker 3

And we had been doing.

01:00:40 Speaker 3

That for.

01:00:42 Speaker 3

Not very long. When I was at work one day and my phone went off and it was a Facebook message. And when I looked down at my phone, my heart just stopped because I saw his name there and he had messaged me and and he was trying.

01:01:00 Speaker 3

To reinitialize contact and and he'd said some things. Personal things that have been put up on Facebook about my life. You know, he spoke about my faith and and he it it signified to me he must have run through my profile so I was immediately like Oh my gosh, you know he's initialised contact and it just kind of set off.

01:01:21 Speaker 3

And Luke, in my life, I was absolutely petrified. All the work that I've been really hard trying to do all myself up until that point. It it all just slipped in that moment and. And so I thought the only thing I can do is try and go back.

01:01:34 Speaker 3

To the police. And so I went to the police and I said, you know, I know that this was left before, but he has contacted me online and I would really please like you to stop that from happening all the while, still having that childlike fear because I was petrified that I knew in order for them to stop him, they were going to have to tell him to stop. And he would know that I've asked for that to happen.

01:01:57 Speaker 3

But I just thought I can't have the work that I'm trying to do in my life be and.

01:02:04 Speaker 3

So this started then a whole new police investigation because they had realised that because it was left with no further action before it, we could just start afresh. So I had to go back through, I think it ended up being about 29 hours of of video interview. But the whole time as well.

01:02:23 Speaker 3

And then continually saying, Are you sure that you did statements before? Because you've told us there is no further action, but there's literally no record of it anywhere?

01:02:32 Speaker 3

We're saying no, definitely 100% did, but anyway so we carried on. There was a lengthy police investigation.

01:02:40 Speaker 3

The perpetrator went on the run a couple of times, absconded and disappeared for months at a time, absolutely petrifying living in complete fear, not knowing where they are until eventually we get to the point where they have had to go through old.

01:02:55 Speaker 3

Folders like container shipping containers that they had of old unfiled paperwork from the old system.

01:03:03 Speaker 3

And in the last box at the back of the third one, they found my name on a file and they found all of my video footage. So we went back through and they married up everything that I've been saying and sort of like 10 to 12 years later, it all pretty much matched perfectly. So they were like, you know, 100%. Now, there's definitely a case.

01:03:23 Speaker 3

We have to take this to court. So we went to the Crown Prosecution Service. They said yes. So the whole thing was going to trial and.

01:03:31 Speaker 3

And then right at the last minute, I remember.

01:03:34 Speaker 3

Feeling.

01:03:35 Speaker 3

Completely lost and like.

01:03:38 Speaker 3

I don't know how I'm gonna manage this trial because for me, it was gonna be so, triggering the fact that somebody's questioning me and trying to pull this like down. And you know, I must be making this up. I must be because of my previous experience and that the baggage that I was carrying of that I felt petrified and and I remember praying and praying and praying.

01:03:57 Speaker 3

Thing and then right at the last moment, he changed his plea to guilty. So we didn't have to go to trial. It was now just going to be a sentencing hearing. And. And so we went to that and it happened to be on my wife's birthday. So we had to go to court on my wifes birthday and he was sentenced and he was given.

01:04:17 Speaker 3

15 years and nine months in prison, and I was the only victim. So it was.

01:04:23 Speaker 3

Insane outcome, like almost a miraculous outcome, because the weightings of the crimes that were committed at the time, they just were so low that.

01:04:35 Speaker 3

It was unheard of to have a sentence that length of time from that era. So the way that it works in the UK is you have to be tried under the weightings of the.

01:04:44 Speaker 3

Crime when you.

01:04:44 Speaker 3

Commit the crime. So even though in modern day weightings it would have been quite easily multiple life sentences, back then the weightings were very, very different. So we left and it was this miraculous.

01:04:55 Speaker 3

Sentenced. But I felt so disappointed and disheartened because to me it didn't feel like.

01:05:03 Speaker 3

A heavy length of time at all. He was only going to serve in prison, the sort of seven years that the abuse had happened, and I had carried this pain and torment for so many years after that time, but that, at least for that moment, put a pin in it.

01:05:21 Speaker 3

In amongst all of this hurt and pain and the court system and the police investigations I had left the church again, I'd completely fallen out of love with my faith. I was so lost. My partner and I had broken up and and we hadn't been together for.

01:05:37 Speaker 3

Eight months. So that was also really difficult. And so my life just completely seemed to. It was almost like that domino effect of one thing fell and then gradually thing after thing after thing after thing after thing fell. And it felt like I was just kind of on my way down this rapid slope of despair. And I didn't know.

01:05:57 Speaker 3

Where I was going to go.

01:05:58 Speaker 3

Umm.

01:06:01 Speaker 3

And so I completely left the church, and I wasn't talking to any of the Christians that.

01:06:07 Speaker 3

I was friends with either which.

01:06:09 Speaker 3

I know people, there's a lot of speculation around this, but for me, if I'm not in contact with at least some Christians who have a like minded faith mind.

01:06:18 Speaker 3

I find it quite hard to connect. I need.

01:06:22 Speaker 3

Like that, brother and sisterhood around me when I'm in that, it's that safe zone for me to connect. So when I detached from that, it was really easy for me to lose my path and detach from my faith. So lows had happened. We moved away from our family because there was different things happening in our life and we were living in a different area completely.

01:06:42 Speaker 3

And I was not in church at.

01:06:44 Speaker 3

All.

01:06:45 Speaker 3

But things kept happening in my life, so I still was being given scriptures all the time, even though I just ignored it and I never even opened a Bible and look to them. I just got these scriptures continually. I was walking down the beach one day and I felt sad, but I couldn't cry and the heavens.

01:07:05 Speaker 3

Just absolute downpour and my dog was looking at me like we're in the middle of the beach, so there's nowhere that we could go and it was just complete chucking down downpour and my eyes just started weeping and I just cried and cried as I walked up the beach.

01:07:23 Speaker 3

And these profound moments just kept happening in my life. But I wasn't connected to the church or to faith at all, and that carried on for a number of years, until one night in 2019, I had.

01:07:42 Speaker 3

A dream. And I remember waking up in the middle of the night and it was kind of like the only way I can describe it is when you're watching like a movie or a TV show.

01:07:52 Speaker 3

And something happens in someone's dream and they wake up and they have that.

01:07:56 Speaker 3

Kind of moment and the eyes go from being asleep like REM sleep deep sleep to suddenly wide awake, bursting with adrenaline. And I remember waking up and thinking ohh my gosh, I've got to write this down and.

01:08:11 Speaker 3

I wrote down this dream and it said my Nana came to me and she told me that she loved me and she was proud of me.

01:08:19 Speaker 3

She said her and that my and my Papa were so proud of the man that I've grown up to be and that she didn't have much time. But she had a lot to tell me. She came to visit me and as an Angel of the Lord, and she had some things that she needed to say when I was young and the person was doing what they were. Some days the heavens would open and it would rain so hard that we couldn't go out and I was left safe.

01:08:39 Speaker 3

She said that that was all of the angels of heaven and they were crying for me. They cried and cried at the things that he was doing. Excuse me and the pain that he was.

01:08:47 Speaker 3

Causing not just me, but the.

01:08:48 Speaker 3

Of heaven they so desperately wanted it to stop, and all they could do was fill the sky with their tears.

01:08:55 Speaker 3

She said that my anger is understandable, but that God couldn't intervene because if he had, he would have had to send a second flood as the world had gone mad with free will. There was so much pain and damage that he couldn't harm one of his creations without harming them all, and the answer to the why question is not ideal, but it's quite simple because God knew that it would never break me and that I would survive it. God sometimes sees these things that he knows are going to happen and he cannot intervene.

01:09:16 Speaker 3

But sometimes he can choose who might have to bear that burden. He knew I could handle all that was to come where others might break. It's not the ideal answer, but it's the only one.

01:09:24 Speaker 3

She has anyone who has to endure something like I have though as a king in the Kingdom, and I will not understand it yet, but I will reap the benefits for an eternity, she said. Of all the things the person had done to me, one of the worst was the curse that they put on my future children. But I needn't worry about that, as the angels of heaven are undoing everything that's been done and they can break it. They will not stop until they succeed. She knows that.

01:09:45 Speaker 3

What casual Rafe is worse than Satan's best, and that is what awaits the person before they are doomed to hell for an eternity. They will endure 10 of Earths lifespans of God's wrath before they're sent to hell that day in court. When I saw him praying, he wasn't praying to my God, he was praying to another God and for his sins, forgiveness was never.

01:10:02 Speaker 3

Option God would only ever smite him and bear him his teeth and they will never see any mercy, mercy and will receive the full extent of all that heaven can bring upon him. She's so happy that I found my wife. She was reading for us for ages and knew before it ever happened that we would meet and so she was so excited. She saw so many times that we were near each other, but we didn't notice, but she waited patiently and she was so happy when we first got together.

01:10:23 Speaker 3

She said the eight-month split that we'd had previously was not in our vision of us, but she saw why it had to happen because of the strength that we gained from it, she said. It's not often people who are meant to be paired find each other and she's so happy that she got to see it happen.

01:10:35 Speaker 3

Our minds and hearts work together, but our souls are also energised and entwined. After the after the dream, my life just kind of continued. That wasn't my prosthetic moment of going back to the church. I had this dream. I'd written it in the middle of the night and I just thought.

01:10:50 Speaker 3

I'm just going to park that because I don't.

01:10:52 Speaker 3

Know what to do with.

01:10:53 Speaker 3

It so life largely continued, I was back in the rhythm of therapy and trying to find myself.

01:11:01 Speaker 3

Trying to undo some of the.

01:11:02 Speaker 3

Damage.

01:11:03 Speaker 3

That I've been carrying for such a long time, but one thing did change and that is that.

01:11:09 Speaker 3

I started listening to worship music again.

01:11:12 Speaker 3

And as I said previously, for me and my life, music has been such a huge thing that I connect with. And so I think that nudge in that direction was a complete game changer for me. I started really connecting with worship and before I knew it, I was sort of subtly connecting with God again. I just didn't know that consciously yet.

01:11:30 Speaker 3

Carry on living my life carried on doing the same sort of things that I was doing before I started the university course and I was trying to change my life through that and things just carried and progressed. And that was until 20/22.

01:11:45 Speaker 3

When I had a second dream, the weird thing about this dream was unlike the first dream where I remember waking up and thinking I've got to write this down as quickly as I can.

01:11:54 Speaker 3

I wrote this dream.

01:11:56 Speaker 3

Evidently, whilst I was asleep, I had no recollection of writing whatsoever, and I actually didn't remember the dream in any way, shape or form. I happened to stumble across it.

01:12:07 Speaker 3

Us in our phones, we quite often my wife and I will have like notes of like shopping lists and, you know, the sort of things that you write in there. And I periodically go through and delete these shopping lists that are months old, that we have no use for anymore. And whilst doing so I thought, oh, that's weird. What's this? And I went in and I read.

01:12:27 Speaker 3

This dream, and this was 2022, so three years after the first dream that I.

01:12:32 Speaker 3

Bad. And and I'd written manna came to me and my dreams again tonight. She told me that he was plotting darkness. But the angels of heaven will forbid it now more than ever. I need to support my I need to support my spiritual armour for battle. I have to make the commitment to the Holy Path. And then the all of the defences of heaven will stand before me, she said. I have to read the scripture Luke 922 to 27.

01:12:53 Speaker 3

This is really important.

01:12:54 Speaker 3

Understand John is expecting me. I'm a child of God and God loves me so much. As such, my baby is protected by the angels of heaven and destined for health, happiness and fulfilment. As death is inevitable, times are shifting, sands. Nothing is eternal. But the life in the Kingdom, everything is pre written and not every story is happy or upbeat. But every story must be told and the play must play out.

01:13:15 Speaker 3

As it is written, humans are complex beings and we have a spectrum of emotions and feelings, and our stories will always reflect that.

01:13:21 Speaker 3

After that, discovering that, I remember thinking, wow, maybe there is more to this. Maybe I have dismissed this last dream. I didn't see it as something necessarily prophetic. I thought it was weird, but I didn't see it as something prophetic. But again, I was still kind of in my infancy because I had attended church and had this Royal Spiritual awakening.

01:13:42 Speaker 3

On fire for God, Danny Wine, Big Church day out downloaded.

01:13:45 Speaker 3

Big stuff jump from thing to thing to thing, and then the tower of cars just sort of fell down and I fell back out of the church again, so I was still quite in my infancy with with sort of like my Christian path as it were. So I have had people also give me prophecies before and people have said to me that my testimony was.

01:14:04 Speaker 3

Going to be my sword.

01:14:05 Speaker 3

And that my story would change lives there. There were things that had been said to me over the years, but I didn't really understand fully the extent of what all of this stuff meant. But after having that second dream, I thought.

01:14:17 Speaker 3

Maybe it is time to reconnect. That was the nudge that really thought, OK, maybe now I need to start exploring this again. I need to start praying. I need to start reconnecting. So I prayed about it. I read the scripture.

01:14:30 Speaker 3

And I didn't understand what John is expecting you meant. So I prayed into that for further understanding. I felt like it was something to do with John, the baptism. So I felt like a John the Baptist. So I thought maybe I'm meant to be rebaptised. I don't know what it all means. And so I discovered that in the August of 2022.

01:14:50 Speaker 3

And in the September, I went to my sisters.

01:14:52 Speaker 3

And there was loads of people there and we were all just sort of dancing around having a bit of fun. And I sat down at the table at one point and somebody that hadn't seen for a long time came and sat next to me. And he was, oh, he was so lovely to see. I've not seen you a long time, Chris, don't you happen to be named John? And? And we were just sort of chatting. And as it turns out, he had taken over a church.

01:15:13 Speaker 3

Where I live and he was now the pastor. And so I really felt prompted, like God was pushing me to mention this dream. Mention this dream. Tell him about the dream. Tell him about the.

01:15:24 Speaker 3

So I told him and his face lit up and he said, you know, in non Christian circles. Do you know what my nickname is? I said no. How would I know that? I've absolutely no idea. He said. Oh, I'm John the Baptist.

01:15:35 Speaker 3

So I said. Ohh.

01:15:37 Speaker 3

Right, OK. And he said I absolutely have been expecting you. God told me you were going to come back. I.

01:15:42 Speaker 3

Just didn't know when.

01:15:44 Speaker 3

And I don't.

01:15:44 Speaker 3

Know where you had to leave in the 1st place, but I knew that it was God's plan, so I've just been waiting for you to return.

01:15:50 Speaker 3

After that conversation, I then thought, OK, I'm going to go to this church because he's running the church and we always got on really, really well. He's he's a lovely, lovely man. So I started to go back to this church, found my feet again in face and started to really connect with God. I started a new journey of therapy.

01:16:11 Speaker 3

At this time, the therapy's so different because I'm doing the worldly therapy whilst doing the spiritual therapy. The two journeys that used to be sort of fighting against each other, as it were, have kind of come together as one now and has solidified. So I.

01:16:26 Speaker 3

Cleansing and healing spiritually, whilst also doing that with the worldly stuff as well. And yeah, have just fully reconnected and we've been going to church now for months and we've met some really cool people and it's just flourishing. But I do distinctly.

01:16:46 Speaker 3

They're like the story isn't over yet. God's still working in my life. There's still a lot of things that are happening.

01:16:56 Speaker 3

And some of the stuff that's happened more recently since I've been back.

01:17:01 Speaker 3

Has also just been completely crazy, so Becky and I were out one day. Who's my wife? We were out one day and I saw a homeless man and God said to me.

01:17:13 Speaker 3

I need you to bless him before I can bless you. And you're gonna need blessing. So give this man the £5 that's in Becky's purse. So I said to Becky, do you have 5 LB your purse? She said to me.

01:17:24 Speaker 3

No, I haven't got any money in my purse.

01:17:28 Speaker 3

So I thought, oh, but then, as I was walking, it was like, give this man the £5 that's in Becky's purse. So I said, can you just check your purse? She pulls her purse out, there's No 5 lbs in there. Should I push you? There's no money. So I'm like, there is No 5 lbs. And then should. Oh, wait at the bottom of the bag, there's 5 lbs in the bottom of her bag. So I take this £5 and I give it to the homeless man. And I just forget about it and think that.

01:17:46 Speaker 3

Yeah. For us at the time, that was huge because we were absolutely broke, like, financially, we'd had a bill come through that we weren't expecting. It was just over £300. We were in deep trouble. I haven't mentioned this to anybody like it was just completely, utterly something that we were trying to manage.

01:18:07 Speaker 3

But literally within days after giving that 5 lbs, somebody posted 312 lbs through my door, which covered the just post it through the door. I've not mentioned this to anyone. I have a ring video doorbell. They weren't caught on the camera.

01:18:22 Speaker 3

And the money went through the door, so I couldn't see the person. I immediately as soon as I opened the envelope and realised what it was was like what?

01:18:31 Speaker 3

Immediately was like, who's put this through my door, jumped on the camera? Scroll back. No one was there. There was no sign of anyone. So that was weird. Then my dog, we were out walking the dog of an evening and.

01:18:47 Speaker 3

We're walking along a path that we'd walked along so many times and we had the dog and the baby with us, and the baby loved having a head torch on when we used to go out in the dark and was quite dark. So I put this head torch on. I said when she looked she could see where the light went. She loved all of that, and so we were walking around this normal bit that we normally walk around and it just so happened to be that the lights.

01:19:06 Speaker 3

The street light had gone out and it wasn't on, so it was pitch black.

01:19:12 Speaker 3

And so we kind of lost control of the dog and before we knew it, the dog had run out into the road and she'd been hit by a boy racing car that was speeding round this road at like 50-60 mile an hour.

01:19:23 Speaker 3

And she was completely lifeless on the floor.

01:19:26 Speaker 3

And I can just remember seeing the the torch light looking at the dog and thinking, Oh my goodness, it means the baby's looking at the dog. So we immediately jumped into action. My wife picked the dog up and she was like, she's not breathing.

01:19:38 Speaker 3

She's not breathing.

01:19:39 Speaker 3

A man in a van just happened to be driving around and we we waved him down and.

01:19:43 Speaker 3

Said please please, please can you help us?

01:19:45 Speaker 3

And and he took our dog and my wife to the nearest vet. And before we knew it, she was rushed to an emergency specialist veterinarian. Everything just happened so, so quickly. But this is within days of this. This money being posted through the doorbell door box and and God had said to me at that time that the blessings weren't finished yet.

01:20:02 Speaker 3

She went to the specialist place. I remember listening to another song which was Highlands Song of Ascent and and I was listening to a song on repeat and just crying and praying and saying.

01:20:12 Speaker 3

Please Lord because.

01:20:15 Speaker 3

Me and the dog had.

01:20:16 Speaker 3

Such a different relationship, like we got her initially as like a therapy dog because I was spending time at home at the.

01:20:22 Speaker 3

Time because I.

01:20:22 Speaker 3

Had really, you know, bad mental health. I was really unwell and I was really struggling to leave the house so she'd become like my little best mate. So the fact that she was dying, I was just pleading to God I I fasted.

01:20:35 Speaker 3

I try to do everything I possibly can.

01:20:36 Speaker 3

Good. And then she came out. They thought she might have a fractured neck and that she wasn't gonna be able to walk again. There was all these really, really potentially difficult situations. And and they went, she's just made a miraculous recovery. She just came home. We had to keep on bed rest for six weeks now looking at her, you would not know that she's any different.

01:20:57 Speaker 3

To what she was before this accident, which fractured her skull in multiple places. Just complete miraculous healing so.

01:21:07 Speaker 3

This journey has been crazy overwhelming and I still find myself sitting here thinking.

01:21:16 Speaker 3

Why me? I I I still struggle to put it together, and even today is a part of this journey because.

01:21:23 Speaker 3

I have been wanting to give my testimony. I've been asked to give my testimony, but I felt so nervous about how to accommodate and do that and sitting in front of lots of people giving my testimony, I I felt so scared and worried and nervous about doing.

01:21:36 Speaker 3

Bring it.

01:21:37 Speaker 3

And when I've been prompted, I've kind of thought, OK, well, I would, but I just don't have the platform.

01:21:41 Speaker 3

And.

01:21:41 Speaker 3

Then within weeks of me last saying that in prayer, suddenly a platform where I'm not sitting in front of hundreds of people and having to bare myself. But I could give my testimony in a way that works for me, has fallen into place, so I'm 100%.

01:21:57 Speaker 3

Certain that.

01:21:59 Speaker 3

The journey is just beginning.

01:22:03 Speaker 3

And I don't know what's coming next, but it's equally exciting petrifying.

01:22:09 Speaker 3

And and I mean if if I can tell my story to one person and they can resonate and it changes their life in any way, then I feel like that's a huge success and an absolute win.

01:22:18 Speaker 3

For me, so.

01:22:20 Speaker 3

Maybe that's this is just where I'm at at the moment and I'm a work in progress and it leads me to my last and final song, which is before and after by Elevation Worship. And yeah, thank you so much for hearing me out today and listening to it. The details there is so much more, but I've tried to condense it down for you guys so it's not 16 hours long.

01:22:41 Speaker 2

Thank you. So good.

01:22:43 Speaker 4

Yeah. Thanks. Leroy was really amazing. Amazing story. And you've you've been through so much and that's it's tough. It's tough to hear. And I've just feel I don't know how to word it.

01:22:44 Speaker 3

Voice.

01:22:54 Speaker 4

But I feel like.

01:22:56 Speaker 4

Anyone could be listening to this and if there's any child that's locked into that prison that you're in, have you got any, like words for them or like, advice?

01:23:05 Speaker 3

Absolutely. I think at that point in time, I was consumed by the fear of a man.

01:23:11 Speaker 3

But the power that God has is way bigger. If you've got somebody who's making you feel like they are all powerful and they can do this, that and the other.

01:23:22 Speaker 3

I'm telling you, God's more powerful when he can protect you. So I would 100% say speak out to somebody I wish more than anything that I'd given some indication of what was happening to someone.

01:23:33 Speaker 3

Because the love that I experienced as an adult, let alone a child of people congregating around me and protecting me and giving me a safe space to heal when I was so broken.

01:23:44 Speaker 3

They did that for me as an adult.

01:23:45 Speaker 3

So if it.

01:23:45 Speaker 3

Was a child. I think that the love and support that you would be given and the safety that you would be given and also the road ahead.

01:23:55 Speaker 3

Is petrifying.

01:23:57 Speaker 3

But in God's stead you can do it. It can be done. It's hard. There are so many trials and tribulations. There's been so many ups and downs along the way, but I can tell you as well that the points when I've been happiest is when I've been connected, you know, prayer, worship, brothers, sisters in Christ.

01:24:17 Speaker 3

I feel my happiest when I'm connected. If I disconnect, that is when I think you start to lose hope. It's it's keeping fixed on the hope and that this isn't a permanent thing. It will come to an end and I I think stay strong and if you can speak to somebody one.

01:24:34 Speaker 3

100%.

01:24:36 Speaker 4

That's me, boy. Well, I mean, you know, it's.

01:24:39 Speaker 4

Just I can't believe you for what you've been through. Like meeting you today. I can just sense you're like an absolute. You've got half gold, I think just.

01:24:47 Speaker 3

Thank you. Cheers.

01:24:47 Speaker 4

Tell.

01:24:48 Speaker 4

And so sorry.

01:24:52 Speaker 4

This must be so hard for you that you've gone out so half gone and I just feel like I should tell you that like.

01:24:56 Speaker 3

Thank you very much. I appreciate that.

01:24:57 Speaker 4

I feel and jealous told me from a child that you've.

01:25:00

Yeah.

01:25:00 Speaker 4

You've had a heart cold and and it's amazing. Would you pray for us? Like, for, for people listening as just to close? Is that OK?

01:25:08 Speaker 3

Of course. Yeah. I'm sorry. We lift. Lift this situation to you. Thank you for for being here with us today. And and hearing this situation out. And I just pray that if there's anyone out there who's in a situation or can resonate with the situations that I've been in. Father, I pray that you would touch their.

01:25:26 Speaker 3

I know that you're a God of miracles, and I know you're a God that can, and I think sometimes when we're in this snow blind tunnel vision place, it can be really, really hard to see outside of that. And I pray God that you would just give paths to show people past, show people there's a different way. Give people strength, show people that there is a life after this situation.

01:25:46 Speaker 3

And I pray that you would give people salvation and take away some of the pain and hurt that people carry, Lord, because it can feel so overwhelming and overbearing that actually you can carry that weight. We don't have to do it on our own. We can share it. And I pray, Lord, that you would. You would show these people that that is an option and that they can lift that to you.

01:26:06 Speaker 3

And please, Lord, just just give them an embrace, Lord, warn them and let them know that there is somebody out there who does understand the battle. Somebody out there that was there at the time that it was going on, because we can feel so alone that actually if we can realise that there is a bigger God out there that's seen it all and been through it with us.

01:26:23 Speaker 3

Then it's a problem halved. So I pray, Lord, that you would just touch touch anyone that that resonates with the story today.

01:26:29 Speaker 3

In Jesus name. Amen. Amen.

01:26:37 Speaker 1

Thanks for listening to the Jesus Studio podcast. Please rate and subscribe.

01:26:43 Speaker 1

The testimonials and stories shared reflect the personal experiences and unique journeys of our guests. Shop our merch at jesusstudio.co.uk.