Having grown up in a home where my mother taught me to pray every night, “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild …”, as I got older, I realized and understood that there was a God and that, for Him to be real to me, I had to communicate with Him on a daily basis, at least every night. Church was not a major influence in my earlier years before becoming a teenager, but thankfully, for as much as I can remember, God was always in our schools. I clearly remember my mother taking my brother and me to church one Sunday morning and us getting into a fight. She was totally embarrassed and never took us back.

As time went on, my parents decided to send their two sons to boarding school and it was there that I was exposed to a different kind of church, a different kind of worship. At boarding school, I came to realize that I could actually say a prayer that was not committed to memory, I could sing and clap to short songs repeatedly that were not hymns, I could express joy and even afford a smile on my face because the God who I was now being exposed to, was actually making people happy.

I grew up in the Anglican Church, and the proper thing to have done was to have become confirmed. Confirmation involved going to classes, which eventually culminated in an official confirmation ceremony. But then I heard about salvation and giving my heart to Jesus.

At about this time, there was a biology teacher at Munro College, who was a past student. This man had returned to the institution to teach but was more like a missionary who had returned with a passion to tell people about Jesus. Mr Jeffery Jacobs was his name and if you gave him a moment, he would share with you about his Jesus. If you gave him more than a moment, he would not only share but would begin to weep, and weep so naturally, as tears of what seemed to be joy flowed down his face, as he spoke about his love for God.

The manner in which Mr Jacobs communicated his Jesus was very strange to me at the time, and provoked a curiosity that caused me to try to find out a little bit more about him.

He would have prayer meetings right before our homework sessions, and so one evening I decided to satisfy my curiosity by attending one of his meetings. I went but still couldn’t figure him out, I couldn’t understand why every time he spoke, he would get to a point where he would pause abruptly, and I would hear “Praise Jesus”, very softly, before he continued. Then it would happen again, and the tears would begin to flow … again; it was as if this man was a vessel that kept on overflowing. Certainly Mr Jacobs did not have the ability to weep at will; so what was it that was making him weep?

I continued to attend the meetings as much as I could because I had by this time heard that Mr Jacobs was “filled with the Spirit”. This made me even more curious and so I went expecting that maybe one day, I would see something spectacular. Well, one evening, something did happen.

There was a friend of mine, who stuttered, who also attended the meetings. His name was Ellerton James. That evening, Ellerton attended the meeting and for whatever reason, Mr Jacobs, who knew of Ellerton’s speech impediment, announced that he was going to pray for him “that his speech would be made whole”. At last, the time had come for me to see the spectacular, but really, in my heart, I was getting ready to laugh in amusement at Mr Jacobs, because surely Ellerton’s speech was not going to change after a prayer.

Mr Jacobs prayed a simple prayer from the small pulpit and without laying hands on Ellerton, he said, “Ellerton, I am going to pray for you tonight that your speech will be made whole.” And that was it, the prayer was done. Then he said, “Speak.” Ellerton began to speak, and there was no more stuttering.

As an athlete, I played football (soccer) for my school and, consequently, had so