I grew up in a home where God was preached. My grandparents on my mother’s side were missionaries in Peru where they had the only orphanage that took children under the age of 4. Before they opened, those orphans were left in the streets to die. Their first orphans were premature twin boys.

After one of the twins died, They adopted the other one who became my uncle. When he reached high school age, he was sent to live with us to attend US High school. He molested me the entire 4 years he lived with us. After he returned to Peru my brother thought he could take up where my uncle left off. I was 10.

It was in Oct 1978 that we found out I was pregnant when a doctor played a baby heartbeat for me and my mother. She thought the father was my

boyfriend (He had never kissed me). I had to tell her about my brother and she ran screaming back to the Doctor’s office screaming at the top of her voice, ”you’re going to have an abortion.”, over and over again. I was 14.

Because I was four and a half months along they had to schedule a saline injection for 2 weeks later. I had 5 months for that was too far along and was far to long for a D&C type. I had to wait for that entire 2 weeks knowing what they were planning to do to my baby, all while feeling the baby moving and kicking.

When they did the injection, it wasn’t too bad having the needle placed and them removing some of the amniotic fluid, but when they started putting it the saline I started to scream, ’Stop jerking the needle.” Suddenly it donned on me that they weren’t jerking the needle. It was the baby jerking, fighting the burning of the saline on its body.

I had to go home and wait for the baby to die and go into labor. When that time came my mother drove me to the hospital and left me there. The nurse put me on a bedpan and told me to press the call button after I pushed out the fetus, then she walked out of the room. Left all alone it took 28 hours for the fetus to deliver and then everything stopped and I started to hemorrhage. My body was exhausted to deliver the placenta and they couldn’t find my mother to get authorization to do a D&C to clean out my uterus of afterbirth. When they finally found her, I had to undergo the same procedure I was too far along to carry out in the first place. After it was over, My mother told me on the way home, ”you will go to school tomorrow and act as though nothing happened and you are never to speak to anyone of this ever.” I had just turned 15.

I grieved for this baby. Just to get out of the house and away from my brother and mother, I got married when i was 16 and had my first live child when I was 17. I ended up having 4 beautiful children, 2 girls 2 boys. When my second child was nine months old, we heard our neighbor praying in the apartment next to ours. We began going to The Potter’s House.

Once when my brother showed up, I ended up in a mental hospital for 4 weeks and I attempted suicide more than once.

I was prayed for many times for my numerous health problems and have forgiven my uncle, brother, and mother. I even spent a few weeks with my brother in the winter of 2008. But I still grieved for that baby. The least thing that could set off that grief. For example, In the spring of 2009, I was in the hospital for pneumonia and they had me on a Bypap machine to help me breathe.

When I had to go, the nurse put me on a bedpan and left the room. It was just like the nurse had done when I had to deliver my dead baby.

Due to my health issues, it is a great struggle for me to attend church. We made it both Sunday morning and evening. It was too much for me on Monday and Tuesday, but we made it Wednesday evening. I knew immediately when you said abortion that you were speaking to me. After you prayed for me, it was as though a great burden was lifted from my heart. Knowing that God still loves and cares for me (even 43 years later) and removing that burden has changed my life. I am happier than I have been since this began. I can now look at a baby without grief flooding over me.

I know this is long, but you have to know the whole story in order to understand the impact that this has had in my life and to what extent this deliverance was a great miracle for me.

Rachael