"When I was preaching between Nepal and Tibet, I was asked in one place not to preach Christianity. But I said, 'I must give my testimony to what my Saviour has done for me.' I was arrested and put in prison for six months. An excellent opportunity of preaching the Gospel! I preached to the criminals but was forbidden.
The jailer said, 'You were put into prison on account of your preaching and here you are preaching again!'
I said, 'I can't keep quiet, I must tell about my Saviour.' Then he told the prisoners not to listen.
They said, 'You have failed to make us better. If listening to him makes us better you ought to be glad.' The jailer was terrified lest all the criminals become Christians and took me away. This time I was put into the jailer's cowhouse as there was no other separate room. The place was full of mosquitoes. My clothes were taken away and my legs and arms put into stocks. Then a basketful of leeches were put on my body. There were leeches round my eyes shutting them, and they were sucking away all my blood. It was very painful. I confess my weakness. God wanted to show me myself. I almost wanted to cry. 'By tomorrow,' I thought, 'I shall be dead from loss of blood.'
When I was praying, however, I felt something like electricity all through my body and my prison was changed to Heaven. 'Will heaven be better than this?' I forgot the leeches, and though I am no singer I began to sing a Hindi hymn. Such wonderful joy! In the midst of suffering I had no external comfort of any kind but I experienced such wonderful peace from my living Saviour. I had given St. Mark's Gospel to the man who had reported me, who immediately tore it up. He came to look at me in astonishment with the jailer. 'What do you think of him?' he asked the jailer.
'I think he is mad,' replied the jailer.
'If by becoming mad one can become so happy, then I should like to become mad too,' said the man."
These eighteen years He is everything to me -- the life of my life and I am never sorry. My relations ask, 'Are you not sorry now that you have to suffer?'
'I am only sorry I did not follow Him before eighteen years ago.... I who used to persecute Him, I who used to tear up Scripture, I must follow Him."
- Sadhu Sundhar Singh
