Delivered From Demons: A True Miracle Story

SPEAKER A 00:00:01 - 00:14:50 It is all too often said that there are no miracles performed these days. Well, I'd like to challenge this idea with my story of deliverance from demon possession. Welcome to Miracles in the 21st Century. I'm Leah Hodge. My story starts from when I was just an infant and my family and I, we went to Fiji for an evangelistic series that was being run in Suva. My father was filming the series and I have 2 older brothers. And while we were there in Fiji, we were staying in a motel room, and one morning I went missing from the room and had walked off and fell off the balcony straight down a shaft of stairs onto a concrete floor. My mother and father immediately raced down to try and catch me. I hit the ground And I survived, a miracle. It was in the front page of the newspaper in Fiji that this baby, this toddler had fallen 10 meters to the ground. And the only thing that happened to me was I was winded very badly, I could hardly breathe, and I only had a scratch on me. This was a true miracle that happened, and I believe my guardian angel was there protecting me because There is a picture of the stairwell that I fell down in between, and if I would have hit one of the railings going down, it would have spun me and I would have been in a real bad way, but I fell straight through them down to the concrete. And looking back on that now, I see how God has worked many more miracles since that day, and God had a plan for my life even though I had no idea back then. Fast forward, unfortunately, my mother and father divorced and separated when I was only very young, not very long after this incident, actually. And so I grew up in a separated home, and my mom raised us on her own. She was a single parent of us 3 children. That had a real big impact on my life. We lived in a very— Poverty. dysfunctional family and there was a lot of trials that we went through. And that ended up me choosing some bad choices in my life. And sadly, when I was a teenager, I left my faith and my upbringing as a Christian. Went off into the world, lived a really sinful lifestyle. the pleasures of sin and indulgence and abuse, and I got into drugs, alcohol, parties, raves, just, yeah, really bad, really bad way of living. That happened for a while, and I was in that for about 10 years, and it had a really negative effect on on me, even though it was fun. Those things that I was doing ended up me being clinically diagnosed with depression at the age of 19, suicidal thoughts, and all these things that I thought were normal. I started, though, working at a solicitor's firm when I had come out of college, and the lady who I worked with was a Seventh-day Adventist. And she invited me one day along to these seminars that she was going to. And I went to them because my life had been sort of not very good, being depressed, anxiety, mental health problems. So I did go along to them and I did learn about diet and lifestyle. And I made some changes to what I was doing and eating. And it really started to be a positive impact on my life. I went back to a plant-based diet. While this happened, I became even a raw vegan where you only ate raw fruits and vegetables. And while I was on this vegan, raw vegan journey, I was in this community of people. I went to this fruit festival in New York City. Oh, wow. And it was where everyone comes together and eats lots of these fruits and vegetables and all vegan things. Anyway, while I was there, I went to a lecture on water fasting because I had, in that period of eating these raw vegan foods, I got this— started seeing symptoms in my body of inflammatory bowel disease, and I didn't know what was going on. And so I tried to fix it myself. Long story short, I went to this water fasting lecture in New York, and there was this testimony that was shared about someone who'd done a water fast who had healed themselves of another inflammatory bowel disease or another inflammatory disease called Crohn's disease. So I was like, wow, I need to do this water fast. This will help me heal. This will help me get better. And so I came back from New York and I came back to Australia and I made the decision to go do this water fast. Now there was one that was happening in Costa Rica and that was going to be happening just 6 months later. So I told my family, told my fiancé that I was going to go do this water fast in Costa Rica, booked a ticket, booked the retreat, and went and did this water fast to try and heal myself from these bowel problems that I was having. It ended up being ulcerative colitis. I was diagnosed later, but I didn't go to the doctor at this stage because I really was trying to fix myself and do things the natural way. Went over and did this water fast in Costa Rica and went over there by myself for 2 months. And my mom was going to come and finish the fasting retreat with me when I was gonna be refeeding, 'cause you do a fasting period and then you do a refeeding period. So she was coming. Wow. At the end, so I went over there and I started my water fast. I fasted for 25 days on water, and it was the most grueling experience that I've ever gone through—not because I was hungry, but because I got very, very ill over there. Unbeknownst to me and everyone there, I contracted an infection from the water that I was drinking. So I was in this high mountain in Costa Rica, and we were we were drinking water from the river. And I don't know what filtration system they were using, but because I had a compromised immune system and wounds essentially in my intestinal tract, a bacteria had got in there and I was so ill. But no one knew because at this fasting place we didn't do any blood testing or anything like that. So do this water fast, become very ill, very, very, very ill. And but I was told that you're okay, just This is all part of it. We just keep going. You're going through a detox. You're going through a healing crisis. You come out the other side. So I was just believing this the whole time. But meanwhile, I'm getting more sick, more dehydrated because I'm vomiting and I'm having diarrhea a lot. Finally, my mom gets there. I break my fast and she arrives about a week after I had broken my fast and I was so emaciated. I look so ill. I was about 38 kilos at that point, and I wasn't keeping any food down. I was not able to drink water. I felt so sick. My mom saw me when she got to the retreat and just said, we need to get you out of here. She was worried. She was concerned. Like, she didn't speak Spanish, and we were in Costa Rica. She was on her own. She was actually a backslidden Adventist at this point in time. She had slowly gotten— been working on her heart before she had come to Costa Rica. And so she had brought her Bible with her to Costa Rica and she had brought her hymn book, but she hadn't been going to church for many years. So she immediately was praying to God, Lord, help me get my daughter out of here. I don't know how to. And so she approached the leader of the retreat saying, I want to get my daughter to hospital. And he said, tried to discourage her, tried to tell her, no, no, it's okay, but Deep down, I knew that I needed to get out of there, but I was so heavily brainwashed by this cultish place that I was in that I was just going along with it. I am so glad my mom was there to be able to speak some reason into the situation, but she was helpless. She is like, we were on this mountain, she didn't know how she was going to get me to hospital, so she is praying, Lord, help me, help me, help me. That night, the same night that she got there, the same day she got there, that night I am in the toilet throwing up again. at about 11:30 at night, and she's like, that's it, I've got to do something. So she went out of the room and went to the leader of the retreat's door, knocked on the door at 11:30 and says, I want to get my daughter out of here. And so he sort of woke up, and then while she is in the room there with him, his phone rings. Now it's interesting because his phone hadn't worked the whole time he was in Costa Rica because he was an American. And he bought a SIM card and put it into his phone to try to have a phone in Costa Rica, but it had never worked. He'd cut it and it never worked. So his phone rings. So that was a surprise. And then he answers it and he looks at my mom puzzled and he goes, it's for you. Okay. So my mom takes the phone call and it was my travel insurance company. So when you go overseas, you get travel insurance. Somehow through God, they had got his number and I had never told my travel insurance that I was going to do this water fast. I just got the travel insurance for going on a holiday. They had got his phone number and it had never worked and they rang right there and then when my mom was standing in the room that night and they said to my mom, we are here to support you. We are here to help you get your daughter out of here. Now this gave my mom shivers. She is like, yes, okay. She felt like she had the support, they were going to get me out of there. We didn't know how it was going to happen, but she got the leader of that retreat to phone a taxi, and the taxi was going to come in the morning. So she went back to the room. He still tried to discourage us from leaving the retreat, but my mom packed up all our things that night, and we just waited till the morning till the taxi arrived. The next morning, we get in the taxi, we get all our luggage, we go, and I'm still very, very ill, obviously. I still haven't been able to keep any food down, not drink any water. I'm just very sick. We make it to the hospital. It was about a 4-hour trip and it was very difficult. We get into the hospital, it's full of people. The emergency room is full, but they see me, they take one look at me and they rush me into the triage. And my mom's giving them passports and all these things. And then while she's there, this lady was also in the hospital bringing her daughter because her daughter had had some problems. They thought it might be appendicitis. So this woman with her daughter was seeing all this unfold before her. She could see that my mom needed help, that I was in a wheelchair at this point. And so she came and helped my mom. She spoke the language fluently. She was actually the German consulate that was in Costa Rica. Wow! And she helped my mom. They took me in to try and get fluids into me, and no one could find a vein in my body. No one could find a vein, and so many nurses were trying and trying. One nurse kept going, and his name was Gabriel. I didn't know this till after, but he finally got a vein in my body because I was so dehydrated. My body was actually shutting down. I was actually to the point of nearly death. Wow! I was the worst case of dehydration they had ever seen, but this nurse named Gabriel, he actually was able to put an IV line in. And so they got me that in, they realized I had an infection, they started doing an antibiotic treatment, and that lady then took my mom and looked after her the whole time. She visited me daily. She got my mom into a hotel and she spoke, obviously, Spanish fluently. She was able to help my mom. She did all my mom's washing. Wow! And to this day, we can't locate her. We can't find her. I've tried to get in contact with her. I don't know where she lives. I don't know how. I even looked up the German consulate in Costa Rica, and it says there was no one at that time in that role. And she actually ended up having to donate her blood to me because I needed a blood transfusion to survive, and they had no blood bank in Costa Rica. And so my mom and this lady that was coming every day to visit me, they went and donated their blood to me for me to survive. This lady also went and contacted the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Costa Rica and the whole church was praying for me. I don't know who this lady was, but I know that I believe God sent an angel to help my mom in this situation because while I was in hospital, After I had come out of ICU, I had an incident in the hospital where I became demon-possessed. And I can't explain, I will tell you what happened, but it is a miracle that I am here today because I became so strong even though I was very emaciated and I was out of control. My voice was the voice of a man. I bit onto my mother's stomach with my teeth and they couldn't pry my mouth open, and the nurses were coming in with rosary beads because this was a Catholic hospital. And so God delivered me through prayer and through hymns. My mom was in the room with me praying and seeking God and singing hymns, and through miraculous healing of God, he delivered me from demon possession. And I know that Only through prayer, only through the name of Jesus, we can believe it. And that's how I know that God is real and he has saved me from demons, from death, from destruction, and I know that he is real. After this, I'm going to share with you in the next episode more about what happened to me after that event. So stay tuned for that, and I'll see you in the next one.