My name is Raymark Francis, and I currently attend the University of the Commonwealth Caribbean, where I am pursuing a bachelor’s degree in applied psychology, with the career desire to become a psychologist as well as a full-time minister of the Gospel.
I have been a Christian now for 5 years and 8 months. Before I was born, while my mother was still unsaved, she prayed that God would give her a son, and then she would dedicate him back to the service of the Lord. Twelve days after my second birthday as an infant, my parents got married, and just a short while after, my mother followed through on her promise to the Lord. Thus, I was raised in the church, and my mom saw to it that I was wholly given to the things of God — I was on the youth choir, participated in service on youth Sunday at church, and my younger brother and I couldn’t even try to get a break from Sunday School!
Well, we would try, but our mom would not even entertain the idea of it!
Throughout the years, the Lord would visit me in dreams, but I never really understood them. I often imagined giving Him my life but after I had enjoyed the pleasures of the world as a youth.
I would do short exhortations on Youth Sundays, but it was mostly out of vain glory. After a while, I began attending church as usual but would fall asleep just before the preacher came to the platform; then I would wake up just when he was done. This new habit bothered me, and I told myself, “I am not used to this, so this must change.” I also hardly prayed before bed and had to ask God to help me shed these newly added behaviours in my life.
“SPEAK TO MY PEOPLE”
At age 15, the Lord God visited me in a dream in which I saw only destruction. I awoke crying, and I heard the Lord instructing me, “Speak to My people.” I remember telling Him in the dream, “I cannot speak to Your people,” because I was convicted of my pornographic addiction as well as the Holiness of God.
When the dream ended, I told my mother that I would be giving my life to the LORD, but again I stalled—I had a girlfriend at that time, and I was thinking that I really wanted to be sexually engaged before completely committing to God.
Well, the LORD got really serious with me; He began slamming shut some doors in my life after this, including the one through which my girlfriend had walked.
I turned to gaming at age 16, and that door also thankfully closed, for I was developing an addiction. I did not realise that I was really trying to fill a hole on the inside of me with all these things I was chasing after until I found a book called “The Living Water”. It made me begin reasoning with God, “I want that water that YOU promised the woman at the well, LORD.”
BETHEL TABERNACLE
So great did He move and set me before Him that I decided on my baptism date in no time. I became filled with zeal for God, and I was quick in understanding the scriptures. He even told me at age 16 that I would someday lead the church I currently attend, Bethel Tabernacle Church of God, in Mountain View.
I was in fifth form at St. George’s College at the time, just coming out of the Covid-19 situation. We were online – which was a real trying time for all of us as students, but thanks be to God, we had face-to-face for both lower and upper sixth form.
Sports was a favourite pastime for me, and I loved returning to the open air. Everyone was now calling me “Pastor”, and I began teaching my peers…not for long, but I did teach a little and would make Christ known to them.
By the time I turned 17, I was fully preaching, and a year later I was offered the role of Sunday School teacher at my church by my own spiritual mother, Minister Hyacinth Joseph.
I gladly accepted, at times saying to myself that, “Wow, I was just a student here a little while ago, and now look where God has placed me!”
I didn’t do much praying about this new role because I knew the Lord wanted me to teach. Sister Hyacinth had been observing me for some time and had asked me before if I ever thought about teaching. Then one day, she just suddenly broke her silence — and since that time, it has been great for me in the service of the LORD.
Four years have passed and I am now age 21. And each time I stand to teach the adults in the Sunday School class, many twice or triple my age, the Lord, by His sweet Holy Spirit, gives me a lesson to enlighten both myself and everyone else.
My church family and my ministers are very supportive of me and have also entrusted me with the responsibility of substitute Bible study teacher when this person is absent.
My entire life is the LORD’s doing, and my only prayer is that all my days, I will continue to heed the instruction mandated in Ecclesiastes 12:13, “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.”
