“I grew up in Grand Riviere du Nord, where my father was a boko, a witchdoctor. As with many witchdoctors, he had many wives, thirteen. So, I was one of 64 children of my father. We had four moms that lived in the main house with me and my brothers and sisters, and the rest of the wives lived outside of our home. He was a powerful witchdoctor, always able to predict people’s futures and numbers for the lottery.
Because there were so many of us, we barely went to school. We all fished, worked the land, found any jobs we could, and there was never enough to go around. Then there was a season where Satan came and took everything from my father. It was a miserable time of great suffering. None of my siblings received more than a 3rd grade education because things were so tight, and we all worked hard, all day, every day, and were always hungry and sick.
When I was a kid, I heard someone talking about Jesus Christ coming back, and I started worrying about that. If Jesus came back and found us like we were…that was an awful thought to me.
To grow up in voodoo means that anything we were eating, playing, working, sleeping, there were always demons messing with us. Satan took everything away from us, and the demons were eating us up, and still asking for more. There are truly no experiences a person can have in Satan that can result in progress.
Satan kept asking for more and more from my father, from our family. Everytime my dad killed animals to sacrifice to Satan, it was never enough for him. He always demanded more, threatened more. My father sold more and more land, killed more and more cows, he did everything Satan asked. We kids were always sick, always suffering, even dying, and it was a miserable life.
A time so awful came that my father had nothing left to give.
My grandparents were believers, and so were some of my older siblings, and finally my father told our whole family that we were done with Satan, who could never be satisfied, and that we were converting, our whole family, together, now.
So we did.
We were in the church the rest of my time at home. I grew up, got married, and I was working at the airport. After I got married at 27 years old, my elementary teacher kept reaching out to me and pushing me to return to school. I went back to school elementary school at 29 years old.
But in 2002, my father died, and as soon as he died, the spirits starting haunting us children, telling us that we all now belonged to Satan, to pay off our father’s debts to him.
I begged God to spare our lives and to spare my family, and knew I needed to step up in my faith and be spiritually strong for our family.
In 2018, I was working to complete high school, and I was praying and praying about what I should do with my life and this education He had allowed me to receive. I asked many people to be praying about what I should do. I thought about pursing a degree in law, and even started studying, but dreams and visions and counsel and prayers and searching kept leading me into studying God’s Word with my life, not law. When I finally felt clear that God was leading me, I headed to Limbay University, because traditionally that was where you went to study theology, but someone came to me and asked me to pray about Emmaus.
The persecution from Satan on our family persisted, and I told the Lord I would go wherever He wanted and do whatever He wanted, just to make it clear! One by one, my family members have been turning back to Satan, giving into temptation and persecution. When they have dealt with suffering, they have given into Satan, and when my child was deathly ill, I was tempted, too, but God told me to ASK HIM to chase that out, to cut that off, and I have.
Satan has truly turned to those in my family that were weaker. But the Bible says that Satan cannot touch a hair on our heads, and I cannot turn back. He is the solution for me. He is the solution.
I spend a LOT of time in prayer.
I realized when I came to Emmaus that I thought I knew the Bible because I knew the New Testament…it was all my church had really preached. But since coming to Emmaus, I am learning the whole Bible, our history, our beginning, dark vs. light, evil vs. good.
This year has been very hard for my country, first the country shut down politically and then coronavirus, and I didn’t know how in the world I was going to pay my tuition even if I did come to Emmaus, and then someone called me out of the blue and told me to come see them, they had some money to help me with books. A few more people have come forward to help me, too, and He is helping me!
Before our family converted, we thought we would all die, but death would have been better than living because we had NOTHING left. But now that I have the Lord, He is the only thing I won’t let go of. If we let go of the Lord, we have NOTHING, and I will never go back to nothing.
Pray, pray for my family. We come from such a satanic past that we are always under attack. Pray for us.
The way the professors are with the students here at Emmaus and the way the staff is is amazing. The teachers are teaching us to teach God’s Word, not just to learn it. I feel the presence of the Lord here, and in my life. God is HERE, His presence is HERE, and I’ve never lived anywhere like that.
I am so thankful for Emmaus because I am now in this strong and Godly place…I need His wisdom and need this Christian community! I stand in the gap for my family, and I pray that the Lord can hold my wife and I and our three children in His hands tightly as I learn more about His Word and how to share it.
To be a part of a transformation like Geffrard’s, please give online here now or send checks payable to Emmaus University to 3170 Airmans Drive Unit 1153-EUH Fort Pierce, FL 34946. We need your help providing student scholarships in ANY amount to help men and women like these live and study at Emmaus!