My name is Maad. I am the third child in my family and grew up in the eastern region of Sierra Leone. My Father was a very devout Muslim, and I grew up attending a Quranic school as a very dedicated student of the Quran and a fanatic in the Islamic faith.
As a child, I wholeheartedly dedicated myself to studying the Quran, the Hadith, and Sunna with the intention of becoming a great scholar and teacher of Islamic studies. Of course, my father was overjoyed with my decision and did everything to support my effort.
Added to the Quran, I was also introduced to many other Islamic beliefs and practices that shaped my worldview and consequently my relationship with people. I was strongly led to believe that every non-follower of Islam was already condemned to hell and enemies of the house of Islam. In my heart, I was a “Jihadist” and fully committed to fighting for the faith and eliminating anyone considered to be a threat to the faith. Non-Muslims, to me, were kafir (infidels).
After completing my training, I started training children and youth in the Quran and leading prayers in the Mosque. The Mosque became the school for young boys and girls. I was also consulted by many for good luck charms, healing charms, good marriages, childbearing, and many other issues. I became so popular and important not only in my community but also beyond my community. My popularity brought me honor, power, money, and influence. Added to all the above were women, because I married three more wives and had ten children in the shortest possible time. I truly considered myself bigger than life and some also thought the same of me.
I lived in this self-made bubble of utter illusion for almost twenty years. Then I started getting strange supernatural dreams of visitations in human voices, giving me instructions about people and places. In the morning I would carry out the instructions as directed, and everything would come out accurately and perfectly. I kept all of this to myself and candidly enjoyed my new so-called “gift from God.” The dreams became natural occurrences, and my execution of the instructions was on target.
However, with time I was no longer comfortable with my dreams because I started hearing strange voices speaking louder and louder in my dreams and during the day when I was alone. As the volume of the voices speaking to me during broad daylight increased, I started responding in a way that was equally very loud. This went on for some time, and it grew worse.
I started seeing objects talking to me even in the middle of business transactions. People started noticing my strange behavior. Later, when I became tired of hearing and seeing these objects I began running after them physically, and people standing by would see me running but never saw what I was chasing. I believe everybody concluded that I was losing my mind. I was held, tied up, and confined to a room.
My relatives and friends started bringing all the best Islamic people who were good at solving my kind of problems but each one started their treatment with a great promise to heal me and never succeeded. My situation went from bad to worse. I was moved from place to place searching for solutions but never finding them. My family spent a lot of money doing all that was humanly possible to get my situation under control but to no avail.
After four years of living in this condition, my senior wife told my family members about some church people who conducted prayer times in different communities. She told about the many testimonies people were sharing about the divine intervention of God while being prayed for. My family members reluctantly took me to one of their meetings.
As the prayer was going on, I started feeling like a fire all over my body, and I started shouting and screaming. I was held tight by my relatives because I felt like running. After the prayer time, my family members were told to bring me to the prayer house. I was brought to the house in chains. Every day several groups of people would come in and pray for me at different times of the day. This went on, I believe, for weeks and I started feeling good, the voices stopped, and I stopped seeing the strange objects. I was untied, and I started walking around, joining in prayer time, and talking to my relatives and family members who visited from time to time.
When I realized that I was fully healed, I surrendered my life to Jesus and was baptized. I later became part of a small group discipleship for beginners, where I am happily learning the Bible and really enjoying every Discovery Bible Study. To the objection of some of my family members, my wife also accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior and was recently baptized. My children have willingly joined me and become followers of Jesus Christ.
I am committed to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and bring His loving name to the rest of my family and relatives. My dream is to become a church planter who makes and trains up disciples who make other disciples by His grace. I celebrate every day with the wonderful hand of God in my life.
