My name is Jan Hilton; my maiden name was Jan Martinez when I was in the fellowship. I married Steve Hilton, who was also a brother in COBU.

When I left COBU I was very bound to the things that I learned there and I didn’t feel like a normal Christian. When I went to other churches I felt different than the people there. I spoke to pastors of the churches that I went to and none of them understood what I went through, nor knew how to help me and they seemed to want me to brush it aside, and said to seek God and move on.

I felt frustrated and angry and felt that life was very hard, just to do the normal things. A sister told me that Dave and Cynthia had sought the Lord and that he gave them a gift to help those from COBU that needed help. Steve and I were traveling through from our home in Ohio to Steve’s family in Massachusetts and called to see if it would be ok for us to stop in on our way through at their home in NJ.

I knew that Steve and I were in trouble. We were fighting and I felt ill-equipped to deal with the day to day stress of being a wife and mother to two small children. As we were traveling, I still had my doubts and fears that nothing might happen, but my need for relief seemed stronger than my doubts. I was also excited that something good might happen because I knew Jesus was greater than COBU, but so far I couldn’t get past a bunch of negative feelings. All the things that I learned in COBU about what a wife should be like and what a husband should be like wasn’t part of my reality and left me feeling like I was never doing enough or doing the right thing. I constantly questioned myself, my motives and second guessed every move I made so that I had no peace.

I was happy to see Dave and Cynthia and their baby boy. They made us dinner and they asked if we’d like to pray. We spent the night. The next day it was as if the Lord kept filling my mind with different scriptures, then Cynthia turned, while we were praying and said to me, “Don’t be afraid to speak out the things that I am saying to you.” In my heart I knew that only the Lord knew that he was speaking to me, so when Cynthia said that, it was a confirmation to my heart that the Lord was with her, though I didn’t say anything at the time.

Dave explained the blessing of the oil and asked if we’d like to receive it. When I received the oil blessing I felt very unworthy and it seemed that all my pain was bubbling up and all I could do was weep. I felt as though I was safe to let some of the things binding me come to the surface. I remember seeing God like Stewart, harsh and unforgiving and constantly holding me to a standard I couldn’t keep, yet when Dave poured the oil on my head the Lord spoke comfortingly to me and I began to see that God was kind and it was a beginning for me. It was a definite turning point for my whole family.

The Lord spoke to us that the pain we had, also poured down on our children and that they too needed to have a blessing of the oil. It was summertime and my son was constantly challenging and my feelings were that if my kids could have some blessing, that that was fine with me, and might make my life a little easier.

When my son Steven was prayed for and Dave poured a lot of oil on his head, he seemed to change before our eyes. He began to giggle and laugh and seemed to enjoy all the attention. I had never seen him as calm as he was after he was prayed for that day.

For Steve and I, it was a chance to seek the Lord together and it seemed as though a lot of my angst and stress was alleviated at that time. When we left, I felt as though a little light came into the door of my heart. Looking back, I know I still had problems, but I realized I got a certain amount of relief that I didn’t know I could have and I was grateful for it and looked forward to praying with them again.

Over the years, whenever I would call Dave and Cynthia they always took time to listen to whatever was going on that I needed to talk about, no matter how long I needed to talk they always listened and asked if I’d like them to pray with me on the phone or if I wanted them to pray on their own for me. I always knew that if I would ask them to pray for me they would, but when I’d pray with them on the phone, usually the Lord would use their prophetic gift and the Lord himself would go to exactly what was stressing me and I would get lifted up right then, on the phone. This was a great comfort to me and always helped me to feel that there was someone who cared about my faith and well being.

Moving forward I’d like share a specific blessing that was incredible to me. I was burdened for many, many years by a stress that seemed to cripple me. It was a stronghold over my heart that I never expected to get any relief from.

I was visiting a sister in the South and Dave and Cynthia planned to stop by the same weekend I was there. There were just myself, Cynthia and two other sisters and we decided to pray together.

At the time, one of the sisters had only been out of COBU for a short time and we began to pray for her.

Then Cynthia wanted everyone to pray for me. Cynthia came to me and embraced me and I began to cry. I had a lot of stress over my parenting of my son. I always felt that when he was little I was too harsh, because of the influence of the fellowship on what parents should be like. I would see other mothers with their children and always beat myself up that I hadn’t been gentler with my son in his formative years. I felt like it was a bad movie, that always had a bad ending, that I couldn’t change. When Cynthia embraced me, the Lord spoke to me: "that he was taking out of my ear the condemning voice and that he threw it into the depths of the sea, where no one could ever touch it again. He said, "that the enemy rubbed this negative message into my face every morning, noon, and night and constantly taunted me, but that he could no longer use this against me and that I was free from it!"

I was totally filled with joy and was so grateful, that something that burdened my heart and mind was suddenly completely gone!

This was huge to me and I hadn’t spoken to Cynthia about this stress and yet the Lord, through her gift, seemed to not only see it, but was able to reach inside and take it from me.

It was one of the most extraordinary experiences of being blessed that I’ve ever had in my life.