I Kept Saying: I Am Healed — Rev. Edward Adeniji Koye-Ladele

This is his founding testimony. He doesn't tell it often — at least not in these notes — which makes this recording something close to rare. He describes 1983. He was young, desperately sick, discharged from hospital with no diagnosis and no remedy. He switched on a radio to distract himself from thoughts of death, and the preacher on the other end happened to be praying for exactly that — you sickness that they said does not have any name, come out. He fell. He passed out. When he woke up, the pain was gone. He was still skeletal, still emaciated, but there was an inner strength. And I kept saying: I am healed. I am healed. I am healed. It was the beginning of everything — his faith, his ministry, thirty years of preaching. He shared it here so that his listeners would know: it is your turn for a miracle.

Between 2018 and 2022, my dad sent hundreds of short voice notes - prayers, declarations, and pastoral reflections - to WhatsApp groups of friends, family, and church members spread across Nigeria, the UK, the US, and beyond. He recorded most of them early in the morning, usually before 9am, from the house in Ibadan. Many of them were part of his series, Strength for the Journey.

Because he wanted them to be preserved, he typically recorded them as a voice note to me and then forwarded it on to the different WhatsApp groups he wanted to share them with. I have stored 92 of these voice notes, listened to them, transcribed them carefully, and selected twelve to share here. I will add more of them in the years to come.

These twelve span four years, different seasons of his life, and different modes of his pastoral voice: testimony, prayer, teaching, encouragement, and pure blessing. Some are two minutes long. Some stretch to ten. All of them honestly, unapologetically, bluntly, my dad. In most of them, he's sitting alone in his room. He's not constrained by, or speaking to, a specific audience. I often close my eyes and imagine him sitting there in his room upstairs in Olodo, embracing this new tool as a way to keep doing his life's work.

We hope they are a gift to everyone who knew him, and to everyone who is only now meeting him for the first time. - Mogbekeloluwa & the Koye-Ladele family.

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This is his founding testimony. He doesn't tell it often — at least not in these notes — which makes this recording something close to rare. He describes 1983. He was young, desperately sick, discharged from hospital with no diagnosis and no remedy. He switched on a radio to distract himself from thoughts of death, and the preacher on the other end happened to be praying for exactly that — you sickness that they said does not have any name, come out. He fell. He passed out. When he woke up, the pain was gone. He was still skeletal, still emaciated, but there was an inner strength. And I kept saying: I am healed. I am healed. I am healed. It was the beginning of everything — his faith, his ministry, thirty years of preaching. He shared it here so that his listeners would know: it is your turn for a miracle.