I will share my testimony in two parts. The first part is about the three sufferings that I experienced before becoming a Christian, and the second part is about the six stories after I started to believe in God.
The first suffering happened in 1978 when I was five years old. One afternoon, I went to a sawmill with my dad and played there. I climbed up onto a crane. There was a knife switch whose upper part had a protective cover, but the lower part didn’t. Three fuses were exposed on the outside, and the voltage of each fuse was 380V. I touched one of the fuses with my hand out of curiosity, then the crane stopped in an instant. Right after that I collapsed on the floor and lost consciousness.
My dad immediately took me off the crane. His co-workers helped perform CPR on me and then fetched cold water to pat on my forehead. Fortunately, I woke up two or three minutes later. In fact, that electrical shock caused serious problems in my heart. The "dilated cardiomyopathy" I’m having now has affected me since then.
The second suffering took place when I was in the third grade of elementary school. A senior student came to tease and taunt me again by calling me "uneven legs". I couldn’t help going into a fight with him that day. As a result, I was knocked out by him and fell heavily onto the floor. The doctor diagnosed my injuries as severe concussion, severe brain swelling, and increased intracranial pressure. Later I also suffered from stuttering.
The third suffering happened when I was in junior high school. I needed to go to a school 30 kilometers away from home. My mother was afraid that I would be bullied by the same group of kids again. She didn’t let me live at school together with my classmates, so I was just a day student. But when I was in the second grade, I was still beaten by a male classmate in the same class. He slammed my left eye with a hard punch. At that time, I saw stars. It didn't take long for my entire eye to swell so badly that I lost sight. A few years later, I got “secondary glaucoma" because of this eye injury. The doctor said that surgery was necessary to completely lower the intraocular pressure. Therefore, later I had open-angle glaucoma surgery.
I already came to Christ at that time, so I kept singing hymns and chanting the Lord’s Prayer during the operation which later went smoothly. My intraocular pressure dropped instantly after that. There have been almost no problems since the surgery up to now.
These three sufferings have really hurt me in the depths of my heart. After believing in God, my heart gained true peace. I knew that as a child of God, I must forgive people and no longer hate them.
Before I was laid off in 2000, my colleague gave me a copy of the Koran. I read it at home. One day my mother saw it. She showed me a copy of the New Testament with Psalms and said, “You should read this.” That was how I became aware of the gospel.
Then one Sunday, I walked into the church. After the service, a brother started talking with me after knowing that it was my first time being here. For the first time, I was not laughed at for my disability in the feet. When I stuttered, they listened to me patiently. I felt that the people here were different from the people outside!
Once a sister from the church asked me if I had a girlfriend. I said that I had before, but they abandoned me for my disability or my job, now I was single. Later, through another Christian matchmaker, I met my current wife, Lai Benzhen. She wasn’t disgusted with me, nor her parents. On January 5, 2006, my wife and I had a wedding ceremony in the church.
My grandfather was a bus driver. He drove safely for 40 years without any accidents. My mother preached the gospel to my grandfather. In 1993, he was baptized. Later, the funeral of my grandfather was held in the paper mill over three days. The paper mill sent two buses of people, plus the believers, totaling four buses of people attending the funeral including those who didn’t know him. Thank God for making Grandfather’s memorial service a beautiful testimony in front of the world.
I was baptized in 2001 and then joined the group. Later the group leader asked me to take over his position. Although I had a stuttering problem, I accepted it. After that, I went to the meeting point of the chemical factory. I was asked to lead singing and prayers before the meeting. At first, I prayed in a very disorganized way. Plus, given my stuttering problem, I, quite nervous, even couldn't breathe at the end of the prayer or hear any sound. I then looked for relevant information for help. Although I still stutter now, I am basically fluent when praying.
No matter how high or low my salary is with different jobs, I do my duty to tithe. From the beginning of building our church, regardless of whether I had a stable job, I’d make special contributions as long as I had a salary. Receipts were given for my offerings and announcements would be made.
Now I still have two diseases. One is dilated cardiomyopathy which is now further diagnosed as chronic heart failure. Another is a flatback syndrome that the physiological curvature of the lumbar spine becomes straight. I have an enlarged heart with almost no symptoms. But I have to take five kinds of medicine every morning, which costs several hundred yuan a month. In the past few years, every time I went to the Peking Union Medical College Hospital, the dean advised me that I could apply for a special disease discount for chronic heart failure. By all means, I finally got the special disease discount which reduced the cost of my medicine.
(The author of this article, Brother Wang Qin, serves as the Jianan Group leader at the Gospel Church Youth Fellowship in Yong'an City, Fujian Province, and works as a church worker at a railway meeting point and chemical plant meeting point of the Gospel Church.)
- Translated by Shuya Wang
