HEALING WATERS

My name is Mariah, and Jesus healed me on Easter Sunday, 2025. My story begins on the evening of Good Friday. I was out on the MAPS Global front lawn playing volleyball with a couple of my friends. We were about 10 minutes in, when I jumped to get a ball. I landed in a weird way and immediately felt tearing in my stomach from the left side to the right. I then felt internal gushing. I was in so much pain. It's the most pain I've ever felt in my life. A couple of the people that were there with me, helped me get to the Emergency Room. When I went in, they immediately found out that I was internally bleeding. They began considering me as a surgical candidate, but they needed to run some tests to find out what was really going on. They did a CAT scan, some blood work, and an ultrasound. With that, they figured out that I was completely torn from my left oblique all the way to my right oblique. If the tear would have been any deeper, I would have needed surgery.

We were in the ER for about seven to eight hours. The whole time, I couldn't lay down and I could barely stand up. I was bending over for seven hours, and on constant pain medicine.

Then, they said that the recovery would be a natural process of three to six months. So I couldn't do anything to help myself. I was just going to have to sit around, which was super unfortunate. I kept thinking about the fact that I was supposed to get baptized on Sunday. I thought, “There's no way. I can't even sleep. I can't lay down. I can't stand up. I'm not going to be able to get baptized.” Crutches were the only thing that gave me any relief just from the bent-over position. I used the crutches to get into church on Easter Sunday.

When Pastor Randy Martinez called people to go up to the front to get baptized, I ended up going. Just before that, when I was coming into church, there were multiple people who came up to me and said, “I believe that when you go in the water, you're going to come out healed, like physically, mentally and spiritually.”

I thought, honestly, that everybody was crazy. I didn't believe that would happen. I realized that I didn't have as much faith as I thought I did in the fact that Jesus can heal. So, I decided to get baptized anyway. I went into the baptismal pool, and the second I stepped in there, I felt the Holy Spirit so heavily.

Then, Pastor Randy and my friend went to baptize me. When I went under the water, I felt the same exact tear that I felt on Friday night. It was painful. I immediately got nervous and thought, “I just hurt myself worse.” But I came up out of the water and did a flexing movement with my body in celebration of being baptized. And I felt nothing. There was no pain. I walked out of the pool in complete shock and was like, “I'm fine. I have no pain at all.” Then, I came back out through the doors after being baptized. Shock was all over my face. I was looking at everybody. I was bending over. I was jumping. I was twisting. I felt completely fine, and everything was great!

In that moment, I realized that the prayers and faith of other people in this community allowed me to believe a little bit for myself. That ended in Jesus healing my whole body. Now, I'm completely fine. Jesus heals!