William Ashwell

I believe in prayer, because if God had not answered prayer, I would be a long way from Portland; I would be in Hell. When I was ready to throw up my hands and give up, God was merciful to me and permitted me to get hold of a little Apostolic Faith paper back in Virginia. I read those testimonies and I didn’t laugh at them or throw them aside; I said there was something to it. Thank God for that little paper!

In reading those testimonies, I learned that people were sending requests to the Apostolic Faith Church headquarters for prayer and that the Lord was healing their sick and afflicted bodies and saving their souls. I was one who needed healing. I had been suffering for seventeen long years, with a cancer in my side that had been caused by a fall. I never expected to see another well day, but I sent a request to God’s people for prayer. They prayed for me and God heard and answered those prayers and instantly healed me.

My wife was ill with consumption and lost weight until she was only skin and bones. She had contracted it from her sister, who died while my wife was taking care of her. There was nothing that the physicians could do. I didn’t think she would live another two weeks, but Jesus healed her, too.

That put a hunger in my heart to be with God’s people, so I came to Portland, Oregon. When I arrived, I was filthy—I used chewing tobacco and had for years. One night something said to me, “Throw it out,” and I threw it out; the tobacco habit left me. I had come from Old Virginia, where they raised and chewed tobacco, but God delivered me completely.

I went to the altar in the Apostolic Faith Church and called on God for mercy and He saved me. Then something else came up—the crooked life that I had lived. I had restitutions to make, and many of them. I had defrauded two railroad companies and also the United States Post Office when I stole stamps and sold them. But the moment God saved me, He gave me the grace to go back and confess that crooked life and pay back the stolen money.

During the war, I worked down on the river among twenty-five other men. Thank God, there isn’t one of them who can walk up and point his finger at me and say I haven’t lived a Christian life.  

At age seventy-six, I had not taken a drop of medicine or a one-a-day vitamin in thirty-five years.  What did that little paper mean to me that came to my house? There is no gold or silver on earth that could ever pay the price for what that paper meant to me. Thank God, it was through that paper that God saved my soul, saved my family, and has carried us through all the diseases we’ve had. Thank God for the old-time religion and the peace and joy that is in my heart.

The story of this Virginia family did not stop here. Two daughters became active in Sunday school work, a son worked in the Apostolic Faith printing plant, and another son and daughter regularly attended the Apostolic Faith services.