By Susan Kataike
It’s been 23 years of walking, living & believing, in Christ Jesus.
It’s been a journey of turbulence & joy, learning, unlearning & relearning. I wouldn’t exchange it for anything. I fall, I get up.
Lately, I have been reminiscing on the day that I surrendered my life to the loving arms of God through His begotten son Jesus Christ by believing in my heart & confessing with my mouth Jesus as the Lord and Savior of my life.
It all started with the lady in this picture, she’s called Pastor Betty. Commonly known in church circles as the woman whom God healed of HIV/AIDS. I bet some of you are going to stop reading at this point, but I suggest you hang in there.
I completed university in 2000 & gave birth to my son the same year. I was living quite a good life. I owned a car, had a business & I was living in a good house in a great neighbourhood courtesy of a generous man. However, my life was empty, there was a void that no amount of money or a seemingly great life could fill & I was becoming anxious to the point that I couldn’t sleep & I didn’t know why.
So one day I was driving from Makindye through Nsambya & I saw her. But I was in disbelief because I expected her to be dead. I looked at her from the side mirror, slowed down, and reversed. It wasn’t until I called her name Auntie Bettie & she responded that I realized that indeed she was alive. I met her when I was in senior six & I haven’t seen her since.
Lived with her for a year & in her, I saw the most agonizing pain a human being could go through. She was suffering from HIV, the Herpes Zoster had eaten her back, & she groaned due to the fire she felt in her skin. Her entire body was in pain, she needed to be massaged to ease the pain.
I later joined the university & I never saw her for the next three years, but I heard that she had been taken to the hospital. It was that day at Nsambya Hospital that I was seeing her again. I invited her into the car we drove & parked at the Total fuel station adjacent to Nsambya Hospital & she narrated her journey to recovery.
After a while everyone got tired of her & she damped into Nsambya Hospital. She had no one to take care of her as people gave up on her due to her deteriorating health. It was Born Again Christians, an evangelism group that would go to the hospital weekly to pray for the sick they had mercy on her & took her to Mutundwe Christian Fellowship a ministry led by Pastor Tom Mugerwa.
The church became her home, she lay in the church as they believed & prayed for her healing & for over a year the church didn’t give up on her. They fed her, clothed her, nursed her, & rehabilitated her. Soon she started making progress. ( She has documentation of her diagnosis in case you’re wondering) She told me about her interactions with the mighty hand of God, the visitation of the Holy Spirit, & the various encounters too wonderful to utter, that left me in awe of this God.
As she narrated I felt this presence & power that shook me to the core of my being. Listening to her endeared me entrance into a world too beautiful for comprehension. When I asked her why she was coming from the hospital, she said God had instructed her to extend the same love of the gospel of Jesus Christ’s healing grace to a dying world where medicine has its limitations. As we parted I couldn’t contain myself.
For days I failed to sleep, I was already anxious, but this time it was different. On the third day, I called her & I said to her that I wanted to meet the Jesus that healed her. She said I needed to give my life to Christ Jesus as the first step & I did at Mutundwe.
For the first time in a long time, I slept like a baby, and I will never cease to glorify the God of Aunty Betty. God has placed Angels along your path, to play a role in your destiny. Jesus is real, salvation is a relationship with Him. Don’t let naysayers fool you.
Make JESUS the choice TODAY! Happy 2024. Cheers.
Susan is the head of communications at the ministry of works and transport