Helen Luka

I was just nine years old when my mother was saved, and from that time forward we had a Christian home. We were taught the Bible and taught to pray in the morning before we went to school and in the evening before we went to bed. We had to pray out loud, from the youngest to the oldest. Sometimes when I had done something wrong it was hard to pray.

When I got to be a teenager, the Lord began to deal with me in a mighty way. I tried the things of the world, tried to find joy in worldly pleasures. I wanted to fit in among the other girls in junior high and high school, but I was a miserable misfit. At home, we would gather around the piano to sing hymns and testify, and I was a misfit there, too, among Christian family and friends. I had a tender conscience and the Lord dealt with me so many times. It seemed that Mother found out about every trouble I got into. I felt that everything I said or did was wrong and it bothered me. I was such an unhappy girl.

One day, when I was sixteen, there was a headline in the paper that someone was predicting the end of the world. It scared me, and I asked my mother if she thought that it was going to happen. She said, “Well, it says in the Bible that nobody knows, not even Jesus knows when the end will come, but it could be at any time.” I couldn’t sleep that night. There was fear in my heart that the Lord would come before morning and I wasn’t ready. I got down beside my bed and sought to be saved. I prayed a little while and then went into the kitchen and asked my mother if she would pray with me. Right there in our home, we knelt together at the kitchen chairs. She prayed for me, and the Lord came into my heart. He took out that misery and the desire for the things of the world, and He put a deep-settled peace in my heart. That was September 29, 1945.

Later, after I was married and had my own family, we attended a church regularly, but there began to be strife and turmoil there. It seemed so many were losing the love of God in their hearts. My husband and I had a deep hunger in our hearts for more of the Lord. We prayed by our bedside that He would lead us to another church where the whole Gospel was preached. Then one day my husband came home from work and said, “We are going to sell our house and everything we have.” The Lord had showed him to move to Los Angeles, California, away from our family and friends.

When we arrived, we knew only one family. We went to see them on Sunday morning and they directed us to the Apostolic Faith Church. As we walked in, we saw the shine of Heaven on the faces of the people. The message was on sanctification and we realized that was what we needed and what the Lord wanted us to have. We had never heard of it before, but that is what our hearts had been hungering for. A few months later at the 1953 Portland camp meeting, the Lord sanctified us both. And a few months after that, he baptized us with the Holy Ghost back in Los Angeles.  

I am glad God has given us the privilege to bring up our family in this Gospel. When the children were sick, He was always there to undertake. One time when our youngest son was about three years old, he had a very serious hernia. He would double up in pain, and stiffen and scream. We prayed. I wrote postcards to some of the branch churches and asked them to pray. God healed him completely. When he was a teenager, he had a physical so he could try out for gymnastics. After the exam he said, “Mom, there is no sign of it.” I am so thankful for those memorials that God has put in our life.

I love the Lord. I am so thankful for what He means to me. He gave me peace and joy, and He satisfies my heart. The Lord grows sweeter every day, and I am looking forward to meeting Him in Heaven.