I had seen the trips advertised in the Psychic News and when I became connected to the internet last Autumn it was the first web site I looked at. As soon as i saw it I felt immediately that I was going to go. I contacted Phyllis Bennett, a medium and guide to John of God, for more details and before I knew it everything fell into place and I was booked to go! by happy ' coincidence' a friend of mine from the Church, Evroula whom i had not seen for months called in January and she was also booked on the same trip! we were obviously meant to go together.

We started our journey at Leeds railway station for the long trip ahead. As soon as the train set of I could feel my energies change, it was most odd. I felt a tremendous surge of healing energy that built up and grew, by the time we got to Heathrow I just about knocked Evroula off her chair when I touched her back! we met up with some of the others in our group in the departure lounge and Stephen, Phyllis's partner who was going to guide us for the long and at times chaotic journey there.

I had no idea what to expect. We were met at Brasilia airport by our guide, Phyllis and a BBC 2 documentary crew. The BBC are making a making a series of programmes about healers and had decided to visit John of God. They wanted to film a group of English people on a visit and had chosen ours. Our group then travelled by mini bus to the village of Abadiania which is about one and a half hour away. The village itself has a shanty town look about it; simple dwellings with tin roofs and red dusty roads. Although there are cars, people still use donkeys, and carts and horses to get around.

Our hotel, happily was reasonably good. I had been warned not to expect Western style accommodation so was pleasantly surprised to find my room clean and comfortable with basic furnishings and plumbing that had a bit of a trick to it but perfectly adequate. Meals were included and buffet style ~ very wholesome with lots of rice, beans, veggies. fresh fruits and meat for the non vegetarians.

The Casa de Dom Inacio, as the healing sanctuary is called, was located about a hundred yards from our hotel. John of God is there Wednesday Thursday and Friday of every week, although the main hall and surrounding beautiful gardens are open every day. The correct dress code for Casa days is white, and I must say a very impressive sight to see everyone walking down the road in white at 8 in the morning when proceedings start.

On our first day at the Casa, the proceedings began in the main hall. Prayers are said and as i sat there I recall feeling an intense warm energy entering through my chest. We then had to get into line to go before John of God. There is a process for this, and this is why it is a good idea at least on your first visit to Brazil to be with a guide as it would seem rather confusing otherwise. If you have never seen John of God before, you go into what is called ""first time line"~ you only are "first time " once even if you make many subsequent visits. If you have a physical problem you want healing for, you present the question on your first encounter. John of God works in what is called "entity" ie he is in trance. Many very high entities work through him and thus administer the healing. In my case I had gone seeking rest and relaxation, but almost as an after thought I remembered I have had a bad back for almost 20 years ! so, I was instructed that I had needed to ask for the physical first. Of course many people go there with serious conditions such as cancer that modern medicine has not been able to cure.

I had got used to having my bad back so it wasn't uppermost in my mind. Duly I went before John of God, and was told I needed and was told I needed an operation and was to return that afternoon,  there are two types of operation ~ visible and invisible and you have the option to choose visible if you wish. Being a complete visible coward I opted for invisible surgery! And so do most people, visible surgery is performed in the main hall on stage and I will describe that later.

On arrival for my surgery I was instructed to sit a room and close my eyes. presently I heard a voice talking in Brazilian so I don't know what was said, I can only describe that I fell into something like a deep meditative state almost instantly; I lost my sense of time and at some point felt that something in the middle of the right side of my back was cut, there was no pain, but it felt as if a tight spring running from my shoulder down to my lower back had been released. After a while I was told to open my eyes and leave the room. I felt very unsteady on my feet and very drowsy as I staggered out with the others into the sunlight.

We were then given instructions as to what we were to do. We had to stay in our rooms for 24 hours after surgery and rest , take the herbs that had been prescribed and drink only water that had been blessed . Our meals for the next 24 hours would be brought to us . The reason for this "quarantine" is that the psychic centres are wide open after surgery and that the entities continue to work on you. They continue to work on you for 40 days, but the first 24 hours is, in my experience the most powerful. Later in the evening after my surgery, I could feel things twanging and releasing in my back. It also felt as if I had just had a good session with a physio with a general ach all over. The energies and the atmosphere of Abadiania are like nothing I have ever experienced. I didn't feel like I was in central Brazil; it was more like being in another dimension.

Apparently, John of God was instructed to build the Casa there because the Village lies on a special crystal rock and it is also quite high above sea level. As my stay progressed I felt more and more relaxed. I slept like a top and at times felt almost amnesic forgetting forgetting words for everyday things and my "real life" in England seemed like a distant dream! Perhaps this state was part of the healing process, I don't know. The days passed quickly although we never left the village. We met lots of lovely people, made new friends and spent lots of time talking and drinking the fabulous juices from the village juice bar.

On Casa days we also sat in 'current' this is where you sit in medative state for several hours at a time in the large inner sanctum where John of God does his healing work. The purpose of sitting in 'current' is two fold. On one hand you are continuing to receive healing and on the other you are helping to generate the energy for the entities to work. After being in current for several hours my head was swimming and body swaying with the energies as I tried to get to my feet again!

It was told to me that John of God came from a very poor Brazilian family and is illiterate. At the age of 16 he went to a village hungry and looking for work and fell asleep. When he awoke he had a large crowd around him and had healed 300 people yet had no memory of it. This was when his healing began. At a later stage he was given a worthless piece of land but after he got it Emeralds appeared, with this he funded the building of the Casa. There is absolutely no charge for healing, just a small amount to pay for the herbs prescribed. Poor Brazilians are given herbs free of charge. I witnessed him perform visible surgery on stage and as a registered nurse for over 30 years I have to say it defies anything i know in terms of how we work in 'modern medicine' Incisions are made without pain or bleeding. Sensitive areas like the eye are scraped with a knife and I saw a long pair of forceps pushed straight up someone's nose! The forceps were twisted quite roughly and he pulled out a large lump of tissue ( and i don't mean Kleenex ) All this with no pain or distress, I was told patients receive a spiritual anaesthetic and indeed, although totally alert when they stepped onto the stage they were suddenly rendered sedated. A crude and thick single stitch is used to close wounds which heal within a few days. He never wears gloves and these operations aren't sterile yet not one single case of infection has ever been recorded.

He has been well studied by traditional doctors over the years and they can see as I did that it is not trickery. An American lady at our hotel had visible surgery on her abdomen, She told us that although she could feel what was going on she felt no pain and her wound had healed within 24 hours. One young man in our group was on his second visit. He had come for healing one year before, he had bowel cancer which had spread to his lungs. He had received what medicine had to offer in terms of surgery and chemo etc, but the outlook was not that promising. One year after healing, all his scans were clear so he had returned for a "top up" and brought his brother with him. He told me he had no religious beliefs or spiritual leanings yet the healing had worked for him.

Not everyone can be healed. One lady in our group, looked frankly close to death on arrival, she was given intensive healing for a week and was told to return home, I heard she died a couple of weeks later. Josh and Danny from the film crew followed her case quite closely and actually gave her a lot of assistance during her stay. She had really been too ill and her illness too advanced to make the trip. To my surprise when I went before John of God for" revision" of my surgery a week later I was told to have a second operation. Struth! and I thought i was pretty fit. Phyllis, our guide also said it was unusual but duly I returned for surgery a second time. My experience was slightly different, I wasn't sure what was being operated on this time, I think it was something more subtle that was being adjusted, I slept for almost 24 hours afterwards. Evroula my friend and travelling companion also works at the hospital where I work, from time to time we would look at each other and say .......... people at work will think we are barking when we go back and tell them we spent two weeks in Brazil laying about sleeping after psychic surgery.......... yes but we will never adequately describe the wonderful experiences we have had I thought.

The night before i was due to leave Abadiania, for the first time since I arrived I could not sleep. As I stood on my balcony watching some long nosed nocturnal creature shuffling about the garden below I saw something else, a large clear crystal that was hanging in the garden below seemed to ignite and became a glowing blue light I stood mesmerized for ages and I realized that my restlessness that night was due to my energies somehow having to shift or change to get me back into the outside world.

For me Abadiania is the closest you can get to the other side whilst still alive! This has been just a brief description of some of my experiences. Other people have described it much better. There are two books I know of written in the English language about John of God. 'The Miracle Man' by Robert Pellegrino-Estrich ISBN 064633767X 'The Book of Miracles' by Josie Raven Wing ISBN 0-7596-8982-2     Also Phyllis's website is www.healingbrazil.com                 Cathy Finnerty