Reggae artist STITCHIE has a new album and also a testimony of how Jesus has changed his life.

Stitchie

Even before I came to know Christ, I actually started in church and my mother made sure that every Sunday we would attend Sunday school and so I've always prayed before going on stage and after leaving stage. I've always been fearful of the Lord, in reverence.

There are several things that happened, my father died when I was four years old and so my mother grew us up. I am the sixth child of seven so we had it very difficult growing up, as kids going through all the struggles. I was very close with my mother and my mother died in 1995 of diabetes and high blood pressure. She has always been a Christian.

At the funeral service the pastor Wayne Palmer was preaching and saying if you plant com, corn will germinate and corn will grow. If you plant peas, peas will germinate and peas will grow, if you die saved you will arise saved and if you die unsaved will arise unsaved and so in the midst of my bereavement I realised that I wasn't saved and that I needed to get myself prepared to meet my Saviour and so I started thinking more seriously in that direction.

Then one of my close friends by the name of Conti died at the hands of gunmen. So I was torn to pieces because my mother died and then he died. A couple of months after that on August 7th, 1997,1 was a headliner at one of the largest reggae festivals in the world and I was going down at about 7:45 in the evening with four of my friends in the car. We were just having fun rehearsing the lyrics that I was going to perform that night and I was praying to the Lord, asking him for guidance and protection and to take me down safely and cause me to perform my best. A car was coming in the opposite direction and he turned into the side of my car and hit me straight into a utility pole. The car wrapped around it like a ring to a finger. I saw darkness and thought I was dead. Everybody came to the car and asked how many people died because blood was all over me and on my friends in the car.

They brought us to the hospital and the doctors said that I wasn't going to be able to perform that night because I was seeing double and there was blood coming from my forehead and my knee. And I said, "No man, I have to perform because the fans are expecting to see me." I went to the reggae festival and this was the very first time that I was going to make it known publicly about my spiritual beliefs. I went on stage and said thanks to Jesus Christ for taking me there safely. You could hear a pin drop. I started performing and i got four encores! When I left stage there were journalists from all over the world and everybody wanted to get an interview but I was still bleeding and I was still seeing double and though the performance was awesome I had to be led off the stage.

I remember a little white man with locks coming to me with a knapsack over his back. He said that he had a gift for me and he went into his bag and took out a booklet and gave it to me. I placed it in my pocket and when I went back to the hotel I realised that it was a New Testament. I started reading the Bible and then in the midst of my pain I started feeling goose pimples coming all over me. I have a friend and we have been friends from kids and he has always been a Christian. He has never forced the Lord onto me and so I called him and I told him I was reading the Bible and I was having this feelin' and he said that it was called the anointing.

And then every time I started performing I started feeling guilty and more ashamed. I wasn't singing anything derogatory or anything lewd but I started feeling uncomfortable and the more I started performing the more the crowd would get wild and scream but I would feel so bad and dirty. I decided I couldn't do it any more and with all the experiences that I had with my mother and my friend and the accident, I just decided that I wasn't going to do it anymore and I just stopped.

A lady evangelist, Vanessa Anderson from Canada, came to my church one day and preached a message about the rich man and Lazarus. I went to find her the following day and I spoke to her about it. She was telling me that I needed to surrender to Jesus but I always had a vision that if you're doing good you don't need to be baptised because you're not doing anything evil, so you'd be ok! She was telling me that it's deeper than that and I asked her questions about the baptism and about everything and she told me baptism is a public commitment to show the world that you're saved and that it represents the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

She told me the steps to make to receive salvation. It was just three simple steps. Repent, confess, accept. So after responding, I went to the pastor and I told him I would love to get baptised! On the night of my baptism while I was on my way, I saw a traffic jam. When I got to the church I realised that the traffic jam went ail the way to the church. Everybody came to see me get baptised and the church was packed with people and there were more people on the outside than there were inside. What happened is that around 60 of those who came to see me got baptised also so God used me as the bait to win souls for his Kingdom.

And then after I got baptised I decided I wasn't going to sing any more because I just wanted to know where the Lord was taking me. So I started going to Bible college to make sure that the Word was in me, because if the Word is not in you then it can't come out. I learned to study the Word of God and then I started writing new songs and the words just came.