Trapped in tradition, in continual agony and coerced into conversion,
Djempson wasn’t sure that there could ever be anything
different in his life…
I grew up going to the Haitian Catholic Church, listening to the same liturgy over and over, always the same thing, always on repeat. But to be Haitian, in my family, was to be of a Haitian Catholic Voodoo worldview.
When I got older, I became really ill, and had fever and pains in my stomach for weeks on end. I became so sick and in pain that I couldn’t even walk any more, and we were afraid for my life. Though my family had separated entirely from my older sister when she had married a Christian and converted, they now sent me to her, knowing that the hospitals in town were far better than ours in the country.
She told me she and her husband were taking me to the hospital, but they didn’t! They carried me to their church, told everyone that I had come to be converted, and the church prayed for me right then and there. I was mad, and my family was mad! I didn’t want to convert! I just wanted healed. But my sister explained to me gently that there was no healing outside of Christ.
I had to keep going to church if I wanted to live with my sister, and little by little, I saw an entirely different thing, an entirely different God than I had seen back home. The church was different, the God was different, the pastor was different, and for the first time I saw that perhaps God cared about my life.
Now, I converted truly in my heart, and miraculously, God healed both my heart and my body. I have never been sick like that again, and God continues to change me!
When I was getting ready to go to university, I had a vision several time in which someone stood in front of me, held out their hand, and said, “Come, I have something different for you, that of 1 John 1:1.”
When I was getting ready to go to university, I had a vision several time in which someone stood in front of me, held out their hand, and said, “Come, I have something different for you, that of 1 John 1:1.”
1 John 1:1 says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life.”
Once I accepted that maybe being a Math teacher wasn’t what God had for me, I prayed for God’s confirmation, and soon I had another strange dream. This time, a person came to me and said, “Take you ID, your school papers and 250 gdes to Saccanville.”
I didn’t even know where that was, and everyone told me there was NOTHING in Saccanville, nor was there ANY university in Haiti that only charged 250 gdes to apply.
I had prayed for confirmation, so, even though I was confused, I got my papers together, got 250 gdes, and took public transportation to Saccanville.
I got out of the truck, and right there in front of me on a big wall, it said, “Seminaire Biblique Emmaus.”
I went inside, told the Academic Dean that I thought I was supposed study God’s Word at Emmaus, and he said, “Well, if so, you need your ID, your school papers, and 250 gdes!”
I came to Emmaus out of obedience, but after a few weeks, He changed all my desires, just like my conversion story.
I am now all in, and there is no where I would rather be, and nothing I would rather do than 1 John 1:1…proclaim the Word of Life!
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