By Lorraine Golightly as told to Ada
Brownell
An excerpt from the book What Prayer Can Do by Ada Brownell
I became a believer in divine
healing because I saw my father receive his sight when he was prayed for in a
revival meeting.
The accident that caused
Daddy’s blindness happened in 1950. I was 9 years old.
Daddy (John Feliciano) was
doing construction work in Honolulu, Hawaii, where we lived, when dynamite
exploded in his face. One eyeball was completely destroyed; the other was
damaged considerably. The blast was so severe that doctors said Daddy should
have been dead. Tiny pebbles embedded in his skin all over his body.
“Daddy probably will never see
again,” Mom told us when she got home from the hospital.
I was panic-stricken.
“There’s still hope,” said
Aunt Virginia, who had come home with Mom. “Jesus can heal your daddy.”
We didn’t know what to think
of that. Daddy liked Aunt Virginia, but wouldn’t even let her talk about her
religion in our house. When Daddy saw people from her church in street
meetings, he’d always yell at them, “You crazy holy rollers!”
Daddy went to church, however,
and believed in God. He just didn’t like Aunt Virginia’s kind of religion.
When he came home from the
hospital, he had no hope of a miracle. His eyes were in bandages, and he was
very depressed.
“’I’ve got seven children to support!”
he’d say several times a day. “How can a blind man feed seven children? I might
as well be dead!’
It was true that he couldn’t
support us. Soon we had to live on welfare.
Surgeons hoped surgery would
give Daddy sight in his remaining eye, but the operations were unsuccessful.
After the last operation, the eye doctor told him there was nothing more they
could do for him. There was no hope he ever would see again.
Because of his youth (Daddy
was 31 when he was injured) he immediately was trained in a school for the
blind. He learned braille and how to use a seeing-eye dog. He even learned how
to feel money so he could tell denominations apart.
Yet he remained depressed and
saw no reason for living.
“I’ll never be able to see my
family again,” Daddy groaned one day. “I can’t take being blind. Killing myself
is the only way out.”
Mom tried to talk him out of
his despondency, but without success. He actually intended to commit suicide.
Finally, Mom called Aunt
Virginia and asked her to come over and talk to my father.
As soon as Aunt Virginia got
inside she began talking to Daddy about the Lord and told him what Jesus could
do.
“We’re going to have a
revival, and the evangelist will pray for the sick,” Aunt Virginia continued.
“Will you come?”
“I guess I can try,” Daddy
answered, “but I don’t believe it will do any good.”
When the revival started, my
aunt and uncle, Dad and Mom, and all of us seven children went to the
Pentecostal church. After the lady evangelist preached, it was time for prayer
for the sick. Mom took Daddy by the arm and led him to the healing line.
The meeting was in a large
church and people were getting healed and praising the Lord. Daddy couldn’t see
what was happening around him, but he could hear, and he was scared. He began
shaking.
One woman who was healed of
deafness gave a big shout when her ears opened. Daddy was more frightened than
ever.
Then it was his turn.
“Do you believe in Jesus?” the
evangelist asked Daddy.
“Yes.”
She began praying that Daddy
would receive his sight. Nothing happened.
“Do you really believe?” she
asked my father again.
“Yes.”
She put her hand on Daddy’s
eye and prayed again. Suddenly he began to shout, “I can see! I can see!”
“What do you see?” the
evangelist asked.
“I can see shadows,” he cried.
“Thank God.”
“The Lord isn’t through yet,”
the lady minister told him. “Now believe! Believe!” She began praying for Daddy
again.
“Come here,” the evangelist
told us children, and we went to the front. I was scared and crying as she
lined us all in front of my father.
We discovered the shadows had
disappeared, and Daddy could see clearly. One by one we went to him and let him
look at us. As he called each child—Margaret, Priscilla, Lorraine (me),
Elenore, Johnny, Gordon, and the baby Diane, who was 3 years old, he hugged and
kissed us and we cried together.
My sister Margaret and I
accepted the Lord Jesus as our Savior that night. Mom and Dad did too. One by
one the rest of the children gave their lives to the Lord, and all of us are
still serving God.
After he was healed, Daddy was
supposed to go back to the doctor, so he kept his appointment. The physicians
didn’t believe it when he told them he could see. They were amazed when they
took tests and discovered he recovered his sight.
“God did it,” Daddy said.
Daddy had served God
faithfully for 19 years when he went to be with the Lord.
I’m glad God’s healing power
is available to us today. Doctors thought my sister had a brain tumor, but
after she was prayed for, they could find nothing.
I had an annoying, persistent
ear problem accompanied by dizziness and ringing in my ears, which doctors
couldn’t seem to help and over which I couldn’t get victory. Then I remembered
how God instantly healed Daddy of blindness, and knew the Lord is the same
“yesterday, today, and forever.” Immediately the ear problem disappeared.
Now I can say with the
Psalmist, ‘Come and hear, all of you who reverence the Lord, and I will tell
you what He did for me: for I cried to Him for help, with praises ready on my
tongue. He would not have listened if I had not confessed my sins. But He
listened! He heard my prayer! He paid attention to it! Blessed be God who
didn’t turn away when I was praying and didn’t refuse me His kindness and love”
(Psalm 66:16-20 Living Bible paraphrase).
The
Pentecostal Evangel, October 16, 1977
WHAT PRAYER CAN DO
A Collection of true
stories by Ada Nicholson Brownell Published by The Pentecostal Evangel
By Ada Brownell
Ennis L. Surratt clutched the
cool metal handle of his .45 pistol. Through the weeds he could see three men
coming. He knew they would come near where he crouched because they would be
coming after the barrel of whiskey that had disappeared from his still the
night before.
When the men were only a few
feet from the barrel, Ennis stepped out.
“You’re not taking this
barrel,” Ennis growled, keeping his right hand next to the gun. “You stole it
last night, and we’re going to settle it right here.”
He drew his gun and aimed it
at the thief.
“Shoot!” the thief yelled as
he whirled with his double-barreled shotgun. An explosive charge sounded and
Ennis fell to the ground. He raised up on one knee and fired the pistol.
With a cry of anguish, the
thief dropped the shotgun and fell into the weeds.
Ennis became known as “the
meanest man in town.” That caught the attention of two lady evangelists holding
a tent revival who knew how to pray. Ennis Surratt became an evangelist as well
as his sons and grandsons.
Read many other testimonies and truths in What Prayer Can Do, Purchase at http://ow.ly/9CEI30h4IdL
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