It was exciting to be getting ready to go to Tahiti. I had been invited to go as part of the Christian Surfers movement for ten days. My good friend Brad was going in the contest and I was his sponsor and support person. We were helping a great guy called Kevin, an American surfer who had started out with WYWAM back in the early eighties, married a local lady and became a surfboard manufacturer – and Christian witness – of some renown on the Island. I was going to be sharing my testimony in the local Church as well. It was going to be awesome.
My good friend and surfboard manufacturer had made me two new surfboards. I was so pumped. It was my first mission trip – and what a place to be going. Brad and I were in contact almost daily in the lead up to the trip.
“Baz, one thing about Tahiti..” Brad informed me over the phone “..is that it’s not just a tropical paradise. There are some deep spiritual…actually demonic strongholds over the Island. And some really serious opposition to Christianity”
“Yep, ten-four, over and out and away we go” I thought, not really taking what Brad was saying all that seriously. I was more concerned with how much fun we would have.
Two nights before we went, I went to bed – early. I was wearing my St Benedict Cross around my neck on a Puka shell necklace.
I remember having a really bad dream – not a normal nightmare but a physical manifestation. In my dream, something was strangling me.
I woke up. I could see the light coming in through the window. Yet the strangling continued. Something was pulling my cross and the necklace tightly around my neck. I opened my eyes and a black figure was sitting over me. Who was it?
“Kel” I threw my arm over at my wife” Get it off, get it off”.
“What, what is it” Kel woke up very alarmed.
“My necklace, it’s got my necklace, get the necklace off my neck”.
I felt like I was dying. It was the sickest I had felt. The presence of evil was palpable.
Kel undid the back of the necklace and I ripped it off my neck threw it against the wall.
“Oh, I’m so hot…..I feel so sick” I cried and I stood up and thought I was going to faint. Then a wave of nausea hit me. I ran to the bathroom and dry retched. Now I was freezing cold and the sweat still dripped off me. I felt like I was going to die.
“Oh Lord. I need to go to Tahiti. Please Lord, not now. Please heal me”.
Like a huge chain being removed, the weight was lifted. Within a couple of minutes the nausea had subsided. I walked back into our room.
“What was it – are you ok?”
“Kel, that wasn’t sickness. That was demonic. There was something in this room – it was sitting on me in bed and was strangling me with the necklace. But…I just asked God to help me get to Tahiti and…bang….He just took the feeling away”.
The strange thing is, I always thought if something like that happened to me I would just lay awake all night in fear. But the most amazing thing was I lay down for ten minutes – prayed a prayer of thanks to God – and had a great nights sleep.
And so the trip to Tahiti was great. Brad won the contest against an international field. And although the huge waves snapped his boards before the contest he was blessed to have one board left to win on. I got to give my testimony. Kevin reached the surfers of Tahiti. We made lots of new friends. And the Spirit of the Lord touched many people in that 10 day period.
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