I’m Gayla and I’m in grade 6.
I want to give thanks to God for helping me to overcome my addiction to my device.
Before, I would always watch youtube whenever I could. I would not tell my parents about this, and would even lie to my parents that I was doing other things when I was actually watching youtube.
At night, my parents would tell me to go to sleep, but I would just take my device and watch youtube under the covers until 11 or 12 at night. This made my attitude towards my family very bad and moody. I would always not listen to my parents and get annoyed at them. I also had to wake up at 7 every morning for school, so I would be very tired and not focused.
When I had meetings, I never was really paying attention and just wanted to go to sleep. I was constantly thinking of other things and never really gave my heart to God.
When I heard about this new rehab program that Violin started, I was really scared that I would have to give up youtube and that my parents would find out.
Then one night, my family was in the car driving home. I asked about the rehab program and how it worked. my mom told me it was for brothers and sisters that had device addictions. I mentioned that nobody in our church had addictions, but my mom said “Actually, not true. There are people in church that has addictions. Not everyone is ok like you”. That was when I realized that I had an addiction. All this time I didn’t even know I had an addiction.
I was crying in the car and when we arrived home, I went into the bathroom and cried. I felt like I had no one to help me and that I was all alone. I prayed for God to help me, and He reminded me that it wasn’t too late and I could still take action.
I opened youtube and removed almost all my subscriptions. At that time, I felt really willing and really happy to do it. Nobody told me to do it, but I felt it was right.
The next day, I asked my mom if I could talk to her. I told her about what i was doing before, and even though i was really scared, i felt i needed to do this. I was crying and didn’t know how she would react to all of this. i told her about how i would secretly watch youtube at night, and how i deleted my subscriptions. She told me that the evil spirits and satan were doing this to me, and how horrible they were. She said God is really so so so good, and this is very true. Without God and the church I don’t think I would be able to overcome this all by myself.
Afterward, I prayed to God with my mom and we set plans to help me overcome all the temptations going forward. She told me about all the other brothers and sisters and new friends who were going through this, and how my testimony could help them a lot. At first, I felt hesitant to share this to other people,because I was scared people would judge me. My mom said that lots of people also needed this to help them change. I really hope my testimony can help you to turn away from temptations and satan, and so that you can look and see how God can change you like He did to me.