Ernest Caton

I was born into a home that was not a Christian home. It was a saloon keeper’s home. I didn’t know anything about God—I never went to church or Sunday school.

Just before Thanksgiving Day in 1921, my mother was suffering from cancer, as she had been for several years. She asked my father if he would take us across the mountain from Klamath Falls, Oregon, to the Rogue River Valley to be with her sister who was a Christian. I remember one of the things they did in my aunt’s home. When they sat down to a meal they bowed their heads and thanked God for the food on the table and I wasn’t used to that.

I didn’t know what conviction was; I didn’t know for sure if there was a God or Jesus, but the conviction was so heavy upon me that I left for a few days. When Thanksgiving came around, I went back to my aunt’s house to have what I supposed was the last Thanksgiving dinner with my mother. God had intervened while I was gone.

My mother had gone with my aunt to the Apostolic Faith Mission Hall. It was a very simple place in Medford, Oregon, but Jesus was there. The ministers anointed my mother with oil according to the Word of God and prayed over her. Jesus came into her life and healed her body of that cancer and saved her soul. It was wonderful!

I’m glad that night I prayed the first prayer that I ever prayed in my life.

When we sat down to the Thanksgiving dinner, I looked at my mother in amazement as she ate a hearty meal. She had not been able to eat solid food for months and if she did, I would have to go for the doctor to get him to come and give her some morphine for the pain. As I watched her eat, I pled with her not to do it because of the pain I knew she would be in. She said to me, “Son, while you were gone Jesus came into my life and has saved my soul and healed my body. I can eat anything I want. Our home is going to be a different one from now on. Wouldn’t you like to go to church tonight at the little mission hall?”

I’m glad that night I prayed the first prayer that I ever prayed in my life. Jesus came into my life and made a change. He took out the desire for sin and the desire for liquor. Since my dad owned a saloon when I was born, it seemed like the desire for it was born in me. I used cigarettes and liked to fight. I had such a bad temper that I couldn’t get along with anybody. That night a miracle was wrought in my life and Jesus changed me. It is wonderful to be a Christian today.

After my mother was healed of cancer, she had two more children and raised them to adulthood. God called her to Glory forty-five years later.

It is a miracle that I am standing here today, after 50 years of victory. I thank God today for this privilege. The Gospel is real. At night I can pillow my head and thank God for another day of victory and peace.