"I grew up in a religious family. My mother is a staunch idol worshipper. My father believes there is a God, not a believer yet. I have a younger brother who is married and doing well materially, still seeking the truth.

I was a non-believer growing up, and was worshipping religious gods & idols carved by hands as taught by parents. I had a severe skin disease by birth. It all began after 7 days of my birth, when I started getting boils all over my body as one would get after getting burnt. By the time I was in high school, the skin disease spread to almost every part of my body. It was not just the boils but my skin cracked open and wounded with pus & blood oozing out. Every morning I had to sit under the shower and wet my clothes first to take it out as they would stick with dried pus & blood overnight. I was bullied at school, and people around me avoided me. There were times I had to cover my head with a scarf, like girls, so that flies & bugs don’t sit on my wounds.

I began to hate myself. I was mostly in a depressed state of mind. A voice in my head kept on telling me you are not of worth to anybody and a burden to parents, it's better you commit suicide. I did not want to die. The isolation and loneliness were killing me inside. I started to believe nobody loved me.

My parents had tried everything. All types of doctors, medicines and religious priests, who would take money to perform rituals for my healing & nothing changed. There was no cure to be found for the problem. I felt I was a cursed child & probably committed horrible sins in my previous life according to religious beliefs.

Finally, one day as I was planning in my head how to end my life, sitting alone inside a classroom of my school, a Christian teacher walked up to me and said “I will tell you something which will heal you completely, but you have to trust”. He started with showing me verses from the Bible.

(Exodus 20: 1-5) And God spoke all these words: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me." “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below." "You shall not bow down to them or worship them;"

These verses made me think, and made sense because I was worshipping idols made by hands that don’t see, nor hear. He asked me to come to his house for prayer with his family. I finally visited his house one day after school without letting my parents know. When I visited them, they prayed for me with some oil on my head. I felt as if something touched me, an invisible hand (It was Jesus which I realised years later). He shared the gospel with me. I was touched having come to know for the first time that Jesus Christ came down for me, died on the cross for my sins and sicknesses, rose up the third day, giving me victory over sin, sickness, fear and death. After they prayed, they handed over a Gideons Bible with some verses marked for me to read. One of them was Psalms 23.

As I went home on my bike, I couldn't stop my tears. I never experienced such love ever before, neither knew that someone could love me so much. By this time I was convinced that the God of the Bible is real, and He can heal me.

When my parents came to know about it, they strictly warned me not to meet that teacher again & I did obey them. But in my heart, I already gave up believing on those idols & kept reading Bible secretly. A year later another Christian boy from my class approached me and told me the same words which my teacher told me earlier: “I will tell you something which will heal you completely”. I secretly started attending a Pentecostal church with him. When I first went to church with him the elders & ministers of the church literally cried and prayed for me. I waited and kept praising God believing that He will heal me. The healing was not instant but in the next few months (maybe 8-10 months) I was completely healed from my skin disease head to toe. As it is written how Jesus healed lepers, I was one of them, and God had mercy on me. Meeting with new fellowship in this Pentecostal church that cared about me enriched my relationship with Jesus.

Years later when I recalled how that school teacher shared Christ with me and how he prayed with oil on my head and asked me to read Psalm 23, I was reminded about Psalm 23:5 - "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over." My enemies at that time were my sickness, my hopelessness and the satanic voice which told me to commit suicide, but when they prayed for me with oil (There was literally a table placed in front of me with a cup of oil as the verse says) in the name of Jesus, those thoughts left me and peace of God came into my heart. That very first experience is still fresh on my mind.

Today, I'm living in the US, married with kids. My parents still don't believe the amazing transformation I went through over the years but have slowly started attending church whenever they stay with me. They were hopeless about me. I was hopeless about myself but Jesus changed it all.

Yes, He is a wonder-working God. There is nothing impossible for my Jesus."

May God bless you all!