Moise Mamy Testimony

MOISE MAMY TESTIMONY

 

I come from a pagan family.  In this family, we worship the “gris-gris” and the ancestor’s tombs.  So I grew up learning to believe in these things.

 

In 1968, when I was 10 years old, my parents enrolled me in N’zao school.  I pursued my studies until 1974 thus reaching the 7^th grade.  I was my grandmother’s favorite grandson and since the teacher was strict, she advised me to quit school.

 

At that time, I thought about getting married.  So, behind my family’s back, I got engaged.  Only my friends knew about it.  Some time later, my uncle entrusted me to a truck driver to learn how to drive.  Since this driver was a Muslim, I followed his religion in order to eat and sleep in his home.  If I hadn’t done that, he would have treated me as a CAFRI, which means an unclean person, unworthy to sit at his table.

 

While I was learning how to drive, my fiancée had an accident with one of her eyes.  Her parents took her to the hospital (7 km away) and the Chinese who were in charge of it at the time kept her for two months.  When I realized that by being a driver, I couldn’t see my fiancée anymore, I decided to become a mechanic as this profession doesn’t require so much traveling.  This would allow me to see her most of the time.  When my fiancée was healed, her parents asked her to leave for Liberia to live with her older sister.  I accepted this situation and promised her to do the impossible to meet her again.  A week after she left, I quite my job and told my uncle that I wanted to go to Liberia to continue my apprenticeship over there.  My uncle agreed and looked for someone I could stay with in Liberia.     F\or two months, I lived with him in Yalensou.  Then, he came with me to Liberia and entrusted me to his brother-in-law who worked for the LAMCO Company.  There, I continued to work as a mechanic and I looked for an opportunity to learn English.  Three months later, I was speaking commercial English.  At last I was near my fiancée.

 

After 18 months, I found a contract for four years, so I got married; my fiancée Nowei Male became my wife.  The first year of our married life, we had our first daughter who died three days after her birth. We did not really realize what was happening to us;  we were  too young and did not have a plan for our lives.

 

I MALTREATED MY WIFE           

 

When I started working, I was earning $75 for every two weeks of work.  So every time I would get my salary, I bought one bag of rice and gave 14 dollars to my wife to feed the family.  After that, I would leave with all the rest of the money to go and live with other women.  Often, I stayed away from home several nights in a row.

 

In 1977, we had our second child, a boy.  Since my wife was nursing him, I was absent more often.  Often, I would drop by at home during the day and I would spend the night somewhere else.  My wife did not even know where I was sleeping and when she would ask about it, I would answer her, “You are nursing, you are not supposed to know where I am sleeping.“   What you need to know is that a woman who is nursing is not allowed to sleep in the same room with her husband, because, as we say in our customs, if a nursing mother has sexual intercourse, the child will die.  So I used this believe to justify the presence of more than 5 woman around me.  When my wife was telling me that that this was not how married life should be lived, I would answer her, “You are jealous, you shouldn’t tell me that! You have a bag of rice and the price of sauce on top of it.”  Then she would say, “Take your bag of rice and you money, I did not get married with these things, it is you that I want.”  I would reply, “You are really very jealous.”  I did not care about her advice, and I continued my wanderings about.  Sometimes, I even brought some women home and slept with them in the same room where my wife was sleeping.  She was forced to accept it because I was very strict with her.

 

When the four years contract was over, I did not find another job, so I sent my wife to the village and stayed in Monrovia to look for work.  Since I was alone, I had even more freedom to go after the girls.  This is when I started to go to church.  In fact, I was going to different churches to find girls and to go out with them.  When the pastor was preaching the Word of God, I listened by did not understand what he was saying.  Yet, God started to look for me and a voice started speaking into my heart, “Moise, Moise, I need your life.”  I was confused and did not know what I was supposed to do.  I moved to another city hoping I would find peace, but it was impossible.  One day, I met a friend called Cesco.  He gave me a pocket Bible and I started reading it. Little by little, even if I did not understand anything I was  reading and even if I did not have peace,  my heart was warm and I could still hear this voice that was telling me, “ I need your life.”  I thought about going to a church, but in which church should I go?  Then this voice inside said, “Go to your village- back to your family.”  My thoughts were confused and I did not know what to do.  I was restless.  I did not have any money to pay for my transport, so I had to sell my radio to go home.

 

When I arrived in the village, I was happy, but the peace wasn’t there.  I bought two candles and that evening, I lit them and told my wife, “Come, let us pray.”  She started laughing and asked me if this is what I was doing while I traveled.  I told her, “No, but there is something that speaks into my heart and tells me to pray.  I have seen people do that in churches, so come.  We will do the same.”   That is how we started.  She would sit down next to me and I would read the Bible.  I did not understand anything and did not know how to pray either.  One day I told my wife, “Come, let us go enroll in a Catholic church.”  She accepted, but I did not have time to go to church that day.

 

GOD’S SPIRIT AT WORK

 

One day, I lost a relative in a small village behind mine.  I left to go visit the family and while on my way there, I met a man by the side of the road in the village of Bipa.  I greeted him and he shook my hand.  At that moment, I heard a clear word in my heart saying, “Ask this man what he does.”  He told me he was an evangelist and asked me if I was a believer.  I told him no, I wasn’t.   Then I asked him how much I should pay to become a Christian.  He told me it would cost a lot, but it wouldn’t be money I would have to give, it would be my whole life. The he told me that God loves me.  This was the first time I had heard someone say that God loves me.  I spoke with him for a long time and he asked me if I was ready to give my life to Jesus.  Since I had promised my wife to enroll in the church, which for me would mean becoming a Christian, I told him to come home so that we could discuss it with my wife.  A few days later, he came to my home with another evangelist and I was very happy to welcome them.  That evening, he asked me to go with him to preach the gospel in the open air.  This was the first time for me.  He asked me to invite people to come to hear the word of God, but I lied to him and said that I had a headache.  He started singing and a lot of people came to listen to him.  When he finished preaching, he invited people to make the decision to follow Jesus, but nobody came.  After the meeting, he asked me why I did not go forward.  I did not tell him why, but actually, I was ashamed, so I told him, “You came for me, so let us go home.” My wife and myself became Christians that day, August 11, 1984 at 11:30 PM.   That day, I received a New Testament in Mano (my mother tongue).  For the first time I had a book that spoke about my life.

 

IT IS GOD ALONE WHO CHANGES A MAN’S LIFE

 

Since I now had a New Testament in Mano, I stared reading it.  I read a passage in 1 John 1:9 which says that, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”   But after reading this verse, I did not know how to confess my many sins.  The, I asked the leader of the first Christian conference if I could confess my sins in front of everybody.  He answered, “Yes, this will help a lot of people.”

 

CONFESSION OF JESUS

 

In front of the whole assembly united, I stood up and confessed:  “I am a great sinner.  My sins were to commit adultery with the wives of other men.  Every time I saw a woman, my face would change and my body would not let me be at rest.”  Then I told them how many times I had maltreated my wife.  In the audience, some people were laughing, others were looking at me attentively.  After I shared these things, a different joy came over me.  At the end of the meeting, several people asked why I said these things in front of everybody.  For them, this was very shameful and everyone has their problems.  But I told them that for me, it was a burden too heavy to carry and saying it had freed me.

 

TEMPTATION

 

1 Peter 5:8 – “Be self-controlled and alert.  Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.”

 

After one and a half years of Christian life, the devil started to tempt me.  One day, my relatives got together to decide to send their daughters into the forest to go through initiation.  I told them that my wife and myself would not take part in these things because we had become Christians and the Bible tells us not to do this.  At the beginning, they did not understand what I was talking about.  So the initiation began.  Since we were not participating, the devil used them to tempt us.  My sisters spent two months in the sacred forest and every day, someone needed to bring them bundles of firewood and some meat.  But we refused to participate in it.  This was the beginning of great discords with my family.  My mother threw me out, telling me that she had not prayed God to win me.  The other people tried to discourage us from following God’s way.  The day when my sisters came out of the sacred forest, my wife and I did not stay with the family.  We went to the fields to work.  Then the devil changed his tactic and sent illness.

 

At 8:00 in the morning, I begin having extreme stomach pain and could not get up.  For one hour, I was in agony while my wife sent word to the village to inform my father about what was happening.  When my father came, he had a piece of Caolin in his pocket.  He told me, “It is your ancestors who have taken your stomach.  You need to eat the Caolin to take the pain away.”  I told him, “God lives in me and the ancestors have no more power over me.”  My father, seeing me suffer, was discouraged and said that I was denying the truth.  He went to the village to get a wheelbarrow and some young boys to carry me.  When they got back, I couldn’t see anymore.  They took me in the wheelbarrow and brought me back to the village.  There, everybody came to see me as if I was a criminal.  My mother started to cry, saying that I had disobeyed their god and that is why their god was taking me back.  My family members asked me to ask forgiveness to my ancestors and said that they would do everything so that I could be freed.  I answered them, “Let me die, I will go to my God, but I will never ask forgiveness to the ancestors. I am now following GOD.”  Everybody started to cry.  There was a man in the village called Nicodeme who was a Christian.  I told my wife to go and ask him to come and pray for me.  So he did.  After that I asked my wife to go find a nurse so he could give me some medication.  Thank God, the medication was efficient.  From 8 AM until 4 PM I could not either get up or sit down, but at 4 PM, god saved me from the illness.  And today I praise the Lord because my father and my mother have become Christians.

 

Dear readers, all you have just read did not happen with my own strength, but it is the power of god that brought these miracles in my life.  For you also, if you listen to His voice, God will do great things in you life.  You need to listen to HIS WORD and follow what HE says.  He is the only one who can change a man’s life.  Jesus is both our shepherd and our life. (John 10:27-28)  Answer to His call.  May god bless you and help you to understand His ways and to receive Him as your Savior and Lord.