My youngest son had been born with ‘clicky hips’. He had to wear a frog splint and be transported in a specially adapted pram. When he was 9 months old our parish had a Christian Family Holiday at Hawkstone Hall, Shrewsbury. A Charismatic prayer group took place weekly which we attended. When the intercession began, the nuns started praying for ‘”the poor little baby with the clicky hips”. The day after we returned home was his monthly check-up. I was waiting in the corridor when the doctor came towards me with an annoyed expression, holding the Xray. “The condition appears to have resolved itself” he said, “you can take that splint off”. When I got home, I sat the baby on the floor as I called the nuns with the astonishing news. Immediately, he took off, crawling up the stairs, he who had been barely able to move with the heavy cast and I spent the next three years chasing after him!

A year later, in 1978, we had a seminar and started a Charismatic group of our own which I have helped run ever since. At that time I suffered from chronic bronchitis contracted when patrolling in thick smogs as a serving policewoman. My lungs had been damaged and attacks were getting more serious and frequent and could be triggered off by throat infections, dust, fog, overwork, anything. One day, a throat infection started so I decided to ask the group to pray over me that God wouldn’t let it develop into a full-blown bronchial attack. So, in an amateurish way, we made up some prayers and they laid hands on me. Nothing spectacular happened but my throat infection stayed exactly as it was over the next week. I then thought,: “If God can stop this infection developing, he can heal my bronchitis” and asked the group to pray again, this time for total healing and they did. Again nothing outward happened but I have never had another attack, and I have been remarkably healthly ever since.

That’s over 30 years now. Isn’t God good!

Shirley Harrington