ctmi christian testimonies

Dan – Part 3: How can I do anything else but praise God for leading me to CTMI and to Mauritius?

On arrival, I waited for an hour before someone came to collect me… great start! I moved into a home along with a few other young guys and then went from house to house. It all meant very little to me, where I stayed and why. What hindered me most was the language and culture. I also came to realise that I was a very raw young white man in a foreign country, and that no one really knew what to do with me; which suited me fine. However, slowly, but surely, I began to see something different about these people. I had never experienced such a phenomenon before. Most of those I met seemed to have a genuine desire to serve the Lord before anything else. They were for the most part simple Creole folk, but honest in their desire to follow Jesus, even as they recognised their shortcomings and failures. There was nothing spooky or affected about their behaviour at church, in meetings, or at home with the family.

Without even being aware of it, I began to learn how to love Jesus Christ and His gospel of the cross. Despite myself, I started to put others first, denied my selfish wants, needs and desires. Even I could see that this gospel was setting me free and changing my life for the better. Jesus wanted me to give my life to Him and to serve Him.

In a sense, some of this was easy for me. When the Lord pulled me out of the hell I had been living in, I had no friends and no family. My life was in a total mess. In time, I understood that Jesus was providing me with true spiritual friends, brothers and sisters who were guiding me to Jesus; unlike in my previous life where it was always to a bar or to drugs! I cannot describe it in any other way, but that God Himself gave me a new family in the spirit. They surrounded me, protected me, prayed for me in very difficult times, and loved me despite all my weaknesses. These men of God have been like fathers to me, always pointing me to Jesus, encouraging me to be real, reminding me of the call He has on my life; quite a few of them had been just like me until they met Jesus. I can honestly say that the closer I get to God, the more the things of this world have become strangely dim.

How can I do anything else but praise God for leading me to CTMI and to Mauritius? It was there that I found him for real, got to know him for real. What a privilege it has been to serve him with devoted and committed Christians in an amazing spirit-filled, Jesus-driven church, with a vision to preach the Jesus Christ and Him crucified to all the nations. I am a testimony to Paul’s statement that the message of the cross is the power God to those of us who are being saved… In less than 3 years, I have found myself part of a team working in an area where heroin is rampant. We are in contact with drug dealers, addicts, and prostitutes all the time, as we reach out with the message of Jesus. Without Him, could I possibly have avoided falling back into these temptations even a few short years ago?

As an added bonus, I want to add that both my sister and her husband, who were on their way to divorcing after many years apart, have discovered God’s grace and acceptance and found his forgiveness in another CTMI Network church. Today they are reconciled and have begun to rebuild their lives and their marriage as the Lord intended it to be. My own relationship with my parents has been restored. I am brought to tears knowing God’s miracles in my life and in the lives of my family. I am so grateful to Jesus for giving me a second chance and placing me within the CTMI ‘family’. I bless the Lord for Miki Hardy, his wife Audrey, as well as all the elders in the different churches who stood with me in love and patience and grace. I am so proud to be able to declare, like so many of my brothers and sisters in all the churches working with CTMI all around the world, that I am a free slave of Jesus Christ, and a member of this wonderful ministry.

Dan M. – Gaborone, Botswana