"I was sick. I suffered. I sinned...but during all of this God continued to work in me"

Janet shared her testimony with Grace Baptist Church in Wood Green (www.gracebaptistchurch.org.uk) on Easter Sunday, 21 April, 2019. She was then baptised upon her profession of faith in obedience to the command of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into the membership of the church. Please pray for her growth in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, for her perseverance by the Spirit's power, and for her ongoing witness to the gospel. Janet is the first person we have seen come to Christ from Sky City, a local housing estate we have been seeking to reach for several years.

I was born in a family where I was blessed to hear about God and Jesus growing up, and I knew Jesus was real and in that sense believed in him, but I wasn’t following Jesus at all. At one stage in the early nineties, I had an adulterous affair and I think the man wanted me to become a drug addict. It began with him putting drugs in my drinks. Next thing I knew I was doing crack cocaine and LSD every day for a month. I suspect he was grooming me like a pimp to be a prostitute - one night he told me to go to Manor House very late, and when I got there I saw a lot of working girls. I went home immediately and never saw or spoke to him again. I stopped doing the drugs. But the damage to my brain had been done. I had weird experiences, terrifying things I would see, and continued to lose my sanity. I was eventually sectioned in 1993. I was in the hospital for three months. During that time I remembered things that I had heard and been taught growing up, and came to realise my sinfulness before God and wanted to go to him and have a new life with him. When I was released from the hospital I continued to have this overpowering thought that I wanted to follow Jesus and find a church. It was during this time that I first asked God for his forgiveness, and began to believe that he would save me.

I wish I could say things got better and stayed that way. I was out of hospital for four years, but my medication was making me put on weight and I had problems with body confidence so I stopped the medication. This led to another breakdown that landed me back in hospital four years after my first stay. I was there again for three months before being released. The cycle repeated itself and in the early 2000s after a further serious breakdown in my health and behaviour, I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. I had to go back to the hospital where I stayed for several years, till 2009. I’ve done as instructed since then with my medication and have not had to go back.

I was sick. I suffered. I sinned. I said and did things I deeply regret, and hurt the people that I loved, and who loved me. But during all of this, God continued to work in me. In 1998, after my second stay in hospital, I had a desire to be a fully committed Christian, and realised that to show this, I needed to be baptised. Not just a finger dipped with water making a cross on my forehead, but going down into the water. But it needed to be in a church that I could call home and I still could not find that place. I struggled to find a church that wasn’t weird, where people weren’t making strange noises and falling over. One church I went to was filled with people all dressed in white, jumping up and down and falling onto the ground screaming. I did not see these things in the Bible and it was frightening. I would attend the chapels when I was in hospital, at Chase Farm and Rampton in Nottinghamshire.

Though I’d lived on the Sandlings Estate in Wood Green, after leaving Rampton Hospital for the last time, I lived in Enfield, where I attended a Methodist church. I knew I could not settle there, because they did not do baptism like in the Bible, but I needed to be in one place for a while.

I moved back to Wood Green a year and a half ago, onto Sky City. I did not know this church was here but at the end of last year I met Pastor Ryan at the gym. We were in the lift leaving and I said I couldn’t find any staff so I could get a membership and sign up to classes. He went back up with me and helped me sign up. As we talked, he told me about the church and gave me the address. I said I would visit. I thought it was far, so got in my car and put the postcode in my GPS. I was so surprised when I drove and basically turned a corner and it was just there! I’ve been here ever since my first Sunday early in the year. On that day Elder Charles was preaching and I talked with him about baptism. Later that month Ryan spoke with me, and I told him I wanted to fully commit as a Christian. We talked about the gospel, how Jesus came to save me from my sins, by dying on the cross and rising from the grave. I prayed and asked Jesus to forgive me, to help me, to say I am trusting in him and told Ryan I want to be baptised and join the church. Since then Ryan has taught me more about baptism and has been doing a weekly Christianity Explored course with me. I enjoy attending the church services and spending time with the women of the church when they meet to study the Bible. I am growing in my relationship with God and the church. I am thankful to Jesus for saving me and I am happy to call Grace Baptist Church Wood Green my church home.