We thank God that when I prayed for physical healing at Newday on Thursday, 489 people came forward to fill in a card to report that they had been immediately healed. It was a tremendous privilege. Once again, I am deeply grateful to God.
A few minutes earlier I’d interviewed five people on stage who were healed on the equivalent night at last year’s event, also at the Norfolk Showground, near Norwich. Here’s the chat with one of the five – my interview with Rebecca Burgess (hereafter RB) from Ely, Cambridgeshire. I’ve added some explanatory comments, also in her own words (in brackets) . . .
AH: “When you came to this meeting last year Rebecca, you came on a mobility scooter and you had a mobility car and your mobility scooter was inside your car. Can you tell us about that? Why did you need the mobility scooter? What was the problem?”
RB: “It all started with ectopic heartbeats that came from nowhere. I was getting 15 to 28,000 extra heartbeats a day. I was really poorly with it. They tried medication and that didn’t work. So I had an ablation (operation). They go into the heart and they find where the extra beats are coming from and they heat them up to stop them. That worked. But it caused a rare complication where it caused a scar on my heart. (Unfortunately, I was a huge rarity, the scar on my pericardium. So they class it as pericarditis. It ended up being acute pericarditis, because it went on for so long.) So anytime my heart was raised it caused lots of pain with all the nerves. Lots of chest pain and fatigue.”
AH: “So it was because of the fatigue that you couldn’t walk around normally, you needed the mobility scooter, and you had to give up your job?”
RB: “Yes. Mainly the pain and the pain caused fatigue. And I had lots of pain. (They tried lots of different medication, nothing helped. It just got to a point where they just weren’t managing the pain. Generally what happened was I’d be in a lot of pain, pain caused fatigue, and then that was a bit of a vicious cycle. I couldn’t sleep flat because that caused more pain. So I had to sleep quite upright. I would help get my boys off to school in the morning and then have to rest most of the day so that I could be there for when they got home from school. If I wanted to go from our house, I’d use the mobility scooter. We then went through PIP (Personal Independence Payment) – you get awarded for a daily allowance, depending on how much you can or can’t do, and also a mobility allowance – and we got a mobility car which had a hoist in the back so that I could take the mobility scooter out and about. The mobility car had a smaller mini-scooter in the back. So you’d drive somewhere, get the scooter out, go around, put the scooter back in, get in the car and go home. I could walk, but the more I walked, the more it would cause pain, the more I’d need to rest. The hospital didn’t give me any reason to think I’d get better. All they could do was manage the pain. They were saying it’s going to be the same or worse.”)
AH: “How long, how many years were you in this state, this condition?”
RB: “It started back in 2017, so seven years, until a year ago today.”
AH: “So for seven years, up until last year, you were using a mobility scooter. You couldn’t walk normally, but you came to this meeting [in this same tent exactly a year ago] we prayed in the name of Jesus. I prayed in the name of Jesus. Your son prayed for you in the name of Jesus and your son told you to run. And what happened when you ran?”
RB: “When we ran, all the pain went and it hasn’t come back since.”
AH: “So you’ve had a complete, a complete and total healing?”
RB: “Yes. Complete.”
AH: “You went on holiday immediately afterwards and your husband messaged me and said, you went to Tenerife. Tell us what happened there?”
RB: “Well, there’s a really big water park there. So I went on as many rides as possible. (I went back to see my doctor at the beginning of September. They’re not allowed to instantly stop medication, so they scaled down my beta blockers (which were originally given to prevent my heart from going into tachycardia) and by November I was completely off all medication. I’m under Papworth Hospital with my consultant. In the January of this year, I had a phone call to say I was booked in for an echocardiogram. At the scan, I told them all about my healing and the fact I had no pain. And the person doing the scan said ‘it’s all clear.’)”
AH: “So you’d run outside to that fence, then you ran to another fence and you then went on holiday. You went on all the rides at the waterpark. And then you tried to give back the money that the government were paying you. You tried to give back your scooter, you tried to give back the car? Tell us how did it go when you’re trying to prove to the government that you were healed?”
RB: “I had to speak to the supervisor because they hadn’t had a phone call like mine before. I had to persuade them that I was healed before they would stop all the allowances and allow me to give the car back.”
AH: “So what difference has this healing made to you? What are you doing now, Rebecca, that would’ve been a pipe dream a year ago?”
RB: “I’ve gone back to work. Last month I completed my first 5K run. I’ve been to Alton Towers, been able to run around my garden with my boys. Yeah, it’s changed my life completely. (Firstly I worked in a cafe, and then in February this year I started working as a teaching assistant in school. And come September, I’m gonna be doing supply teaching for the school that I’ve been working.)”
AH: “So you’re back at work and you were telling me that you and your husband are now in the process of seeking to foster children?”
RB: “We just got approval yesterday. (Back in January, my husband and I started the process to become foster carers. Something that we talked about before getting married. And, but it’s been on hold of course. And we went to panel last week and we were just waiting for the final ‘Yes’. We are hoping to start in September. Something we would never had moved forward on when I was in the situation I was for so many years. So now I’m off all medication, no payments, no scooter, no mobility car, it’s been amazing.)”