“WAS MY FACE melting? I didn’t know what was happening.”

Law student Jon-Jon Hilton was crying for the first time since he was a toddler. Minutes earlier he’d googled God on his computer: now he was having a spiritual experience which led him to self-discovery.

Jon-Jon’s childhood in a huge house in the sunny Bahamas may sound idyllic to rained-on Brits. But Jon-Jon’s early years were turbulent. His lawyer father had defended some notorious criminals. Jon-Jon grew up in a family that was infamous among the small Bahaman population. “Most of my family were either lawyers or on the wrong side of the law – or both” recalls Jon-Jon, ruefully.

His mother was a stabilizing influence, especially after she became a Christian when Jon-Jon was 14. “I could see the genuine change in her” says Jon-Jon. “But, generally, I resented the whole Christian thing – it’s a very regular feature of life in the Bahamas.”

Cynical Brits, used to religious apathy, need to imagine a place where high street shop signs say things like “Jay’s Hardware Store – where the customer is king and Jesus is Lord”.

But for the Hilton family even involvement with church life was scandalous. Front page newspaper headlines about his family’s involvement in a brawl in a church (complete with pictures) convinced Jon-Jon of what he had long felt: he had to get out of the Bahamas and “reinvent himself”.

His chance came when he moved to Oxford, UK, to study A-levels. But “reinventing himself” went wrong within weeks: Jon-Jon got into drug-fuelled parties and study took a back seat. But being “clever as well as lazy” (his words), he still managed to get good grades in his A-levels and went to university, despite his life becoming more and more chaotic.

“Drugs were everywhere at university.” Jon-Jon felt his life begin to spiral out of control.

One night Jon-Jon got down on his knees and prayed, inspired by a mixture of Bahaman Christian instinct and a Bible passage he’d heard quoted in the movie Pulp Fiction.

“I asked God to bail me out” says Jon-Jon. “I asked for a sign.” The next day someone poked a slip through the door with a bit of the Bible on it which said ‘The Lord will be gracious to you when you cry to Him’.”

Jon-Jon started living “a double life”. Drugs and parties continued, but between times Jon-Jon shut himself in his room, put Radio One on loud, and listened to a Christian worship CD through his headphones.

Jon-Jon’s new search culminated in his “face-melting” crying experience. “I was desperate” remembers Jon-Jon. “I typed into Google ‘What must I do to be saved?’ and got to a website that gave me a prayer to pray. I clicked on ‘prayed it’ and the screen told me angels were rejoicing. That’s when I started to cry.”

He cried himself to sleep, cried when he woke up, and carried on crying that morning. It was a turning point: years of pain were being cried out.

After this, Jon-Jon moved to London to complete his legal training. One night, smoking outside the Trocadero, he was given a flier for a Jesus Army meeting and decided to check it out.

“When I arrived, late as usual” recalls Jon-Jon “everyone was singing in beautiful harmonies. I thought ‘Oh my goodness: the God I pray to is here’. He was invited to a meal later that week and went along with a bottle of coke, imagining a small group of Christians.

He found himself at the Jesus Army’s big house near Oxford Circus – with fifty-plus others. It was his second “Oh my goodness” experience that week.

Jon-Jon fell in love with the big Jesus family he found there. He went back and back. The unreality of social hobnobbing with the educated elite lost any appeal it had had. In February 2006, Jon-Jon cancelled a party and invited his friends to his baptism instead.

Now, three years later again, Jon-Jon is fired with a vision. He lives at the Jesus Army’s Oxford Circus house and is a key volunteer at the newly opened Jesus Centre there, which helps and supports many people in need.

“God does not want to be a secret” he says. “He wants to be found. He found me – now I want to help many, many others to find Him.”

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