Russell Was Healed of Autism

I can‘t really remember being autistic, but my Mum has told me that she became increasingly troubled about me as a toddler as things always had to be done to a familiar routine. If she took me to the shops, we had to go exactly the same way every time or I would have wild tantrums, because I was afraid.

Mum said I would obsessively flush toilets; I used to spin around and around and never be dizzy, scream a lot and run about flapping my arms. I didn’t sleep well, I drank excessively, walked on tiptoes, I used to repeat everything everybody said, but not understand what it meant. I was obsessed with lights, fans and radiators. I didn’t seem to make any eye contact and I didn’t talk to anyone, I was in a completely different world of my own. Sometimes if people touched me it would be painful, and feel like sandpaper. It was not a nice thing to have.

When I was three, various medical people and therapists saw me and eventually, after months of tests, a child psychologist diagnosed me as autistic and said that I was at ‘the lower or more able end’ of the autistic spectrum. She was concerned about me being able to go to mainstream school, how I would cope with relationships, and concluded by telling my parents this was a lifelong disability - it was all pretty grim.

However, Mum and Dad had been recently baptised and filled with the Holy Spirit, so thanks to the Lord and the prayers and fasting of the fellowship, within two weeks a therapist declared that the change in me was amazing. A few months later, a consultant pediatrician remarked that I didn’t look like an autistic child to her. She was a little puzzled when she tried to marry my records up with my progress. I was tried out at a mainstream school, now with the label ‘autistic with good potential’. Again, I amazed teachers with my progress and eventually all extra support was taken away as I no longer required it.

I went on to lead a normal life and I received the Holy Spirit praying with my Dad in the prayer line when I was 8 years old. Later I passed my horticulture apprenticeship and had to take a two-hour exam with someone constantly firing questions at me and I actually got a 100% mark! I can drive, travel overseas, I love meeting and talking to people, and most wonderfully, I was married in 2010. The Lord has just been brilliant all the way through my life!

Russell is a member of The Revival Fellowship - North London, UK