The Devil Himself

I’ve never seen anyone with demons before, but on Sabbath night, we encountered not only one, but two people who were being mind controlled by the devil.

Saturday night, all the high school and SA officers got together at the school to spend the night for the officer retreat. We had dinner and then went to the gym to play some games. Roy and I were at the gym when Avalon comes in and tells us that we need to get everybody into the computer lab. So we usher the kids to the lab and we found Pastor Tim with a few students inside. Pastor Tim explained that Arty had been seeing a spirit follow him around and telling Arty to follow him. So we all held hands in a circle and started praying for him. Arty was sitting down on a chair but as we started to near the end of the circle of prayers, he started shouting saying, “No! You can’t take me! I won’t let you! Stay away from me!” and started to climb up on the desks with the computers. Pastor Tim was the last person to pray and as he was praying, Arty suddenly collapsed and fainted, hitting the hard tile floor and at that moment, we saw a freshman girl named Joselyn book it out the door.

The next thing I know, I heard Kim yelling for someone to come help. So I ran out the door and followed Joselyn up the stairs to the chapel. She was thrashing around on the ground and some girls were trying to comfort her and calm her down. I helped hold her down, along with Avalon and later, Mrs. Edward. She kept clawing at her neck because she felt Satan chocking her. She would calm down, then begin thrashing again. She kept screaming, “No! I won’t come with you, you freak! Let go of my mother! No! Don’t burn her! Take me instead! PLEASE! Take me instead! Don’t touch my mother!”  We kept telling her that her mother was fine and at a point when she had called down, she asked to call her. So we got her a phone and dialed her mother, but there was no answer because she was probably already asleep. I helped Joselyn down the stairs back to the computer lab so that we could pray for her. When we got down there, Roy and I tried to set her down on the ground. But Joselyn said, “No! Not on the ground! He’ll come up from the ground and take me!” So we let her sit on the desks of the computers. But she suddenly started to thrash very hard. We sat her down on the chair and Roy held her legs down with all his weight and I held her down by her shoulders. Joselyn is about 5’1” and I weigh at least 30 lbs more than her I’m sure. She literally lifted me AND Roy off the ground. I said, “Joselyn! It’s okay! Satan can’t hurt you.” “MISS. I can see him right there!” she replied pointing ahead of her. “Let me go so I can kill him.” She finally calmed down and we carried her and laid her on the ground with a pillow.

There was about five of us holding her down and we definitely needed all five of us to keep her from getting up off the ground and running. I had one of her legs and Roy the other, and it took all of our weight to hold even her legs down. Everyone stood in a circle holding hands around Joselyn and we prayed and sang for a good two hours. The prayers were constant. Finally, she calmed for a while when we were singing and her mom came in. We let her go and she ran to her mother. The demon was gone. Praise God. We all had a prayer in a circle after that. I went up to Joselyn and told her that I loved her and gave her a big long hug. She told me she loved me too and that she was sorry. I really wonder how much she remembers from that experience. Joselyn decided to stay here even though Arty went home. Afterwards she was happily playing basketball, like there was nothing wrong.

Truthfully, I have never been more scared in my life. Seeing Joselyn’s eyes going wild, hearing her yell and tell Satan to go away, I was scared. I don’t know how God gave me the courage to do what I did. I was so shaky after that and as we were praying, I could feel the chills go up and down my bones. I have never felt anything like that before in my life. I was drenched in sweat from holding down a struggling girl for 2 hours. I hugged Roy for a good while after that because I just needed to be held. I can’t believe some people don’t believe in God and demons. I could see the terrified faces of the high school boys that I teach. They looked at me with frightened eyes and just didn’t know what to do or how to react. I hope this night affected a lot of the kids. I know it affected me. I was scared that someone else was going to be possessed after Joselyn and we were all so exhausted as it was. Sunday morning I woke up sore and bruised from the night. We were all exhausted because we had all gotten about 3 hours of sleep. My apartment couldn’t go to sleep until 3 am because quite frankly, we were kind of scared. We prayed a lot though and talking about how God amazing is really helped us with our fear. God is real. God is our protector. God is all powerful. We could feel God’s presence in the room when we were praying. There were probably hundreds, if not thousands of angels crammed into that little computer lab. I will never forget that night. Keep Pohnpei in your prayers.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,  neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Romans 8:38-39