Her Story :-She was born in 2000 and has two older brothers. She was living with both parents up until the age of four years when her mother died. She was taken back to her Mother’s family and has not seen her father since. She was living with her grandmother but the grandmother’s family have never really accepted her. During the Jos crisis in 2008 the family home where she was staying was burnt and since then they have been staying with various relatives.
Last week on 5th February her life changed. Her Aunt’s son was accused of being in the secret cult and was taken to a prayer man for deliverance. As part of that he was asked to give names of other children involved in the cult, he gave Emmanuela’s name. So she was taken to the prayer man and was told to confess. She was innocent and had nothing to confess and so the man started to torture her by burning her with a heating coil all over her body. She was in so much pain that she confessed to involvement even though she was innocent. It was at that point then the wider family threatened to kill her and so Grandma brought her to us at Gidan Bege.
It is difficult to understand what makes someone do something like this to a child, is it Ignorance or Evil ?To me it seems a bit of both. The traditional religion here still believes it is necessary to cleanse the evil out of someone and even when people become Christians it is very easy in a crisis that they revert back to old habits like the Native doctor rather than God. This is a classic example of how Satan has twisted things that a “prayer man” can whilst praying inflict harm…imagine how she will feel when people pray over her in the future…
We see many things like this here and partly the discipleship and teaching in the church is at fault too so people do not trust that God is sovereign and is all powerful and has defeated Satan. It is only through his power we can minister here to children who have been treated like this , precious children to whom God has given a chance of a new life of love and care. Praise God that Emmanuella has the chance of healing and many more like her keep coming brought by God to us. Please keep praying for us and our ministry here.
