On Saturday, we went to the Saia Compound in Houma, where there was prayer, stations of the cross, rosary, Mass and more prayer.
Louis Saia had come down from Tennessee to celebrate the 11th anniversary of his apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Eleven years ago, Saia had planned to kill two men the next day, he supposed it took something extra powerful to turn his life around.
Mary appeared to him and changed his life. Saia has Mass celebrated on the 17th day of every month to honor the Blessed Mother’s visit in a building to commemorate the site.
Saia told Saturday’s crowd, that Mary also made him look 15 years younger. His friend, Jack Smith said, “You see, you don’t need to go to the beauty parlor and spend hours trying to be beautiful…you just have to have Jesus in your heart.”
Smith had come down from Pennsylvania to say healing prayers over the people.
He is a former boxing champ -turned prayerful healer and Smith showed a picture that was taken at the time he called the Holy Spirit down at another prayer meeting. The photo he showed had a thick, honeycomb-like streak of white in a straight line over the face of a person. He wanted to show that there is indeed a spirit world, more that you don’t see compared to what you do see. Many people rested in the Spirit after Smith prayed over them.
Garden Club
Just this past Wednesday, the River Road Garden Club gathered club memorabilia from the past to have it in a presentable form for future generations to browse through.
There were some photos that Reginia Gautreaux had taken when the group went to Destrehan Plantation to make the authentic Christmas decorations.
This was in 1997 and some of Gautreaux’s photographs came out with the same thick substance over them. But these were pinks and greens and whites and went in circles, unlike the straight white attributed to the Holy Spirit.
What does all this mean? I don’t really propose to know, but a story was told of wedding pictures being taken at the Destrehan Plantation and a child showed up in a picture sitting on the steps and no one knew who she was.
The only explanation given was that she was a child who had died in the fields long ago and she attended the wedding reception.
Gautreaux remembers a French lady who was visiting Destrehan Plantation and seemed most interested in paying attention to detail.
All of a sudden, she screamed out; le papier, le papier! Since Gautreaux was a French teacher, she understood that the visitor needed paper to write down what she had heard near the attic.
It was a simple request from some voices that they wished the lights would be turned out and not left on all the time.
They could stand candlelight but not those harsh lights. When the written request was made to Irene Tastet who was director of the plantation then, Tastet said she didn’t understand the request because all the lights went off automatically on the same electrical circuit.
Several days later, one of the workers came and asked her if she wanted the lights in the attic turned off like the others. Tastet was amazed and quickly said, “yes!’
Another time, a floor finisher I knew told me he was refinishing the floors at Oak Alley and it got dark. After he went out the front door, he looked at the plantation house and noticed a light in the attic. The next day he apologized for not turning off all the lights and leaving the one on in the attic. The caretaker told him there was no light up there.
He said that gave him shivvers and from then on, he said he would not work after dark.
Last year there was a lady who felt she needed to pray for some unrested spirits and Ann, Lilla and I took her to Destrehan where she did indeed pray for souls needing prayer.
Ann took some pictures, and again, we noticed in one or two of them the strange thick overlays. We didn’t think too much about them at the time, but after having such a spirit-filled week, I am not discounting anything.
God is good ALL of the time!