Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Andi Pigott Martin. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Andi, appreciate you joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
The Shop’s mission is to bring the healing power of Christ to people stuck in darkness and to bring encouragement and Holy Spirit guidance to those feeling lost and confused.
I recently had the honor of getting to revive this ministry I’d gotten to be a part of several years ago. It was a small but powerful ministry and before I was a part of it, I was a recipient of it.
In 2000, someone took the time to bring Jesus into my past to heal it and me…for free.
In 2000, I was set free from so many demons whose assignment was to destroy mine…and they were good at their job.
In 2001, more deliverance took place at a Restoring the Foundations weekend seminar.
Over the years, I would return to that first person on several occasions for “tune-ups” that would continue to expel more demons and remove layer after layer of witchcraft.
In 2015, The Shop (where Jesus fixes people) was created by that person, who showed me how to be free back in 2000, and another lady with a beautiful heart and soul.
In 2016, when my mistakes caused my world to shatter, I began going to The Shop…where God began putting my pieces back together.
In 2018, I was asked to join as one of the prayer ministers at The Shop. I had the honor of doing for others what was done for me in 2000 and I have never felt more useful and valuable!
In 2020, I left Colorado and The Shop.
In 2021, for 20 months I got to train 2 pastors in New Hampshire in a similar type of ministry and thought it would be mine.
In 2022, The Shop closed.
In 2023, the Lord had me hand over the NH ministry to those pastors and sent me on a year-long cross-country adventure…with no idea where He was leading.
In 2024, He brought me back to Colorado and restored what was lost by giving me the opportunity to revive The Shop!
On Monday, July 8, 2024, The Shop’s original creators, and many of the former prayer ministers, gathered for the first time as The Shop held it’s first prayer and worship time since closing in 2022 and it was BEAUTIFUL!!
God is good and showed up in a mighty way and I get to do what was done for me for free. We get to lead people into freedom from the chains holding them back.
We do not have a website and do not have a social media presence…and are happy to start slowly. We are not even a registered non-profit, yet have fabulous people already helping us get started. Big thanks to them and to God be the glory!!
Andi, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I was a stripper in my early twenties, but God used a club-related sex assault to turn me back to Him. The legal process I had to go through was worse than the assault itself and, at one point a few years into it, I cried out to God exclaiming I could not take it anymore mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and that I needed Him to be Who He says He is! I needed Him to be my “Wonderful Counselor” like He promised to be.
About a week or two later, a lady approached me at church and said, “This is going to sound weird, but I feel like the Holy Spirit is leading me to do some spiritual counselling with you. Would you be interested?”
Wow! Of course I was interested! It was exactly what I had just prayed for!
Katie spent 2 hours every Monday night during the summer of 2000, walking me back through past abuse, abandonment, neglect , and darkness. When she did, she would ask Jesus to show me where He was in the situation. What I saw would completely change my mindset around the event and turn something horrible into something beautiful. You can’t hold bitterness and resentment if the bad thing gets transformed supernaturally into something amazing.
For example, there were a couple of times when my mom was not home and my step-dad wanted to watch a football game in peace. Meaning, he did not want to have to watch me or keep track of me or be bothered with me.
On these days, where it was just easier to tie me up, rather than be a parent, that’s what he did. Pretending we were playing a game of some sort, he would have me sit at the foot of my bed at one of the legs, where he would take my jump rope, have me put my hands behind my back. Then, he would tie my wrists to the leg of the bed. Tightly! Horribly tightly!
According to him, he had learned this particular game in the Army, where they had taught him a way to do this where the person tied up could not move their wrists or hands at all. There was absolutely zero wiggle room. None!
Had there been any way to move my hands or wrists, I would have had hope. I could have focused on trying to get out of the ropes…like a puzzle. Instead, all I could do was just sit there and wait for the game to be over.
The length of a football game was a long time, but I was getting good at disassociating. I could do it during the whippings and the switchings and would need that skill during these long periods of being trapped in one place.
Reading helped, too. I had a voracious appetite for reading and books were a great way to disassociate and step into another world. They had taught me how to easily do that, which came in handy when all I could do was stare at the bedroom dresser in front of me for hours.
Sitting on the olive green carpet, that was so popular in the ‘70s, staring at the brown dresser in front of me, I counted the drawers as I tried to move my seemingly cemented wrists. “One, two, three, four, five, six.”
“Yep, there are still six.” I thought as I continued to try to move my wrists even just the slightest. Nothing! I couldn’t move a thing.
I would begin to feel my chest tighten and my breathing get faster as I realized there was no way out. I was stuck. The only place to go was deep within…deep into my imagination. I could imagine not being held hostage in my own bedroom. I could imagine any other place in the world. I had read about so many wonderful places to which my mind could flee.
Barbados was my favorite place I’d read of but never visited. It was the perfect place to escape. My body might have to stay tied up, but my mind could wander to crystal blue waters and seaside caves just waiting to be explored.
My physical body was sitting on my floor, tied tightly to the foot of my bed while my imagination had me barefoot on a beach with the waves crashing over my feet washing away all the sand I had just collected in between my toes. My long hair was blowing in the wind and my white linen dress flowed effortlessly as I ran along the shoreline as fast as I could.
I could strip down to my swimsuit and dive into the cool, clear, blue water. I could swim to the caves and explore without fear of drowning or getting lost…it was MY imagination and I could control what happened there. I could do whatever I wanted there and it was there that I was safe.
I don’t remember David coming back in my room. I only remember the feeling of blood flowing freely and unrestricted through the veins in my hands again as he untied me. I don’t know how long he left me. I assumed the length of the football game.
I don’t remember him even saying anything to me. I think he just untied me and walked out. I do remember looking at the red indentations the jump rope had left in my skin, wondering what I had done to deserve being treated that way.
When Katie addressed healing the soul/spirit hurts in this instance, she asked Jesus to show me where He was in all of this. As I looked back into these events, I saw Jesus enter my bedroom after David left. He knelt down next to me and gently touched my face and then my wrists and whispered, “I know where we can go.”
Suddenly, my hands were free as He took my left hand and guided me through the wall of my bedroom, out onto the street. HE was the one who carried me off to Barbados and this time He was frolicking on the beach with me and swimming in the caves with me. I couldn’t see it before. I had to ask to see it.
He had made sure I read the book that fueled my imagination of Barbados and He took me there. He knew the best escape for me and had already planned it out. Upon revisiting it, I found I had a Friend with me. Someone who truly knows me and loves me.
God continued cleaning me up that summer as generational curses were broken and I was freed from demonic oppression. I think we got rid of about 30 demons, starting with a spirit of murder that had been passed down from my mom and from her father. Who knows how many generations that went back but it wasn’t until I asked my mom why it said it had come from her, that I got to learn of a family secret I’d never known.
My mom originally agreed she’d let it in through abortions, then recalled almost murdering her baby brother when she was 2. It was then she surmised it must have always been in her and told me a family rumor I’d never heard. Apparently, my grandfather’s brother went on a trip and never came back. He just vanished! The speculation was that my grandfather had been having an affair with his brother’s wife; he found out; they argued; and my grandfather killed him.
I’ll probably never know the whole or real story, but it sure was interesting the things that came to light.
At the end of our time together, I was thanking Katie for my newfound freedom and healing and she said, “You can thank me by going out and doing this for others.”
“No way!” I thought. “I’m not talking to people about demons! They’ll think I’m crazy!”
Well, look at me now. As I began to tell my stories, I wasn’t met with ridicule or disbelief. I was consistently met with, “I need that!”
It seems a lot of people know they are being oppressed by something dark, but don’t quite know what it is or how to deal with it. That’s what we do, but not in a way that’s embarrassing or abusive, like you see in a lot of YouTube videos…but I’ll get to that.
Katie and another lady went on to start a small ministry, called The Shop (because that’s where Jesus fixes people) around 2015, that incorporated a similar type of healing ministry as Katie had done with me back in 2000.
It wasn’t until late 2016, after I shattered my own life through some more really stupid mistakes, that I would begin to attend The Shop on a regular basis. Through an adulterous affair, I had given legal ground back to so many of my old demons and they brought their friends.
God had mercy on me and cleaned me up again and, in 2018, I was asked to join The Shop’s ministry team.
Wow! Suddenly, I was getting to do for others the wonderful thing that was done for me! I was getting to see people walk in in a cloud of darkness and despair and leave with a light in their eyes and visible evidence of heaviness lifted and hope restored. I have never felt like I had more purpose or was more valuable!! It was addicting…the kind of addiction that’s good for you and good for your soul.
When all things 2020 happened, I left Colorado and The Shop. The Shop shut down a couple of years later and I remember thinking, “It’s official. I can never go back to what once was.”
After a couple of years of accidentally training pastors of a church in New Hampshire on what we were doing at The Shop, God sent me on a wild, cross-country camping and book writing adventure that you can read more about in some of the stories on my Substack Page at AndiPigottMartin.Substack.com
After about 6 months of camping, I was bouncing in and out of Colorado a bit and didn’t know where God would end up planting me. Idaho was nice. Utah maybe? Wyoming? God would ultimately set up a situation where He would put me back in Colorado and be given the opportunity to revive The Shop ministry….exactly one year to the day that He had me leave New Hampshire.
A little over 2 months later, The Shop reopened!!!
July 8, 2024 was our first gathering and it couldn’t have gone better! You could feel the presence of God in our beautiful new home at The Dwelling Place in Golden, CO. It felt overwhelming to have so many of the old ministers back together and to be able to be used again in the most incredible ways to get to help and encourage people. We are back!!
We are starting off slow and we meet at The Dwelling Place, 16800 W 9th Ave, Golden, CO 80401, every other Monday from 10AM until 11 for worship, communion, and prophetic words, if the Holy Spirit gives any. From 11AM until Noon, we have Corporate Prayer where everyone is invited and we have Private Personal Prayer for those who have signed up to be ministered to for specific needs.
Private Personal Prayer is completely confidential, Holy Spirit led, and free…as it was done for me. This is similar to what I wrote about Katie doing for me in the summer of 2000. While some deliverance might take place, it is not like the embarrassing things you might find on YouTube. We have the authority, through Jesus, to control demonic activity and we do NOT let them manifest or speak through people. Our God is a gentleman and does not embarrass people who are seeking His help and He has given us a process to make sure we do not allow for embarrassment or ugly manifestation.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
This is one of my favorite stories that goes back to asking Jesus where He was in the awful stuff and changing your mindset regarding the event.
As I was writing my upcoming book, “Dancing into Deliverance,” and revisiting the time spent with Katie, I struggled to remember ever addressing the following event. I am sure we did, but since couldn’t recall it, I decided to ask Jesus where He was again. I love what He did!!
When I was 3 years old, there were two times when my mom and step-dad spanked me, bare bottom, for 3.5 hours for not saying “please.” To be fair, I was a stubborn child. STUBBORN!
All I had to do to get them to stop was say, “please.”
Quite honestly, as I write this I have to laugh at my 3 year old self. What a headstrong, obstinate, pigheaded child I was! I endured over 3 hours of torture because I refused to be polite.
I know it wasn’t the first time they’d had an issue with me being too good for politeness, so maybe they felt they had no other option, but they took turns spanking my bare bottom for hours. Why would they take turns, you might ask? Because their hands would start hurting and they would have to take a break. Apparently, my butt could take a lot more pain than their palms. Seriously, “please” would have stopped it all!
Having Jesus step into this one was a little different. I could see him do a face palm and shake His head at all of us. “Y’all are ALL ridiculous!” He said, laughing. He was right. We all had plenty of blame to share in the torture I was enduring.
But then He said, “This stubborn one is Mine! This one will be able to endure anything that comes against her and she will be unstoppable because of it. Satan’s attacks will only make her stronger and more determined. She will be dangerous in the spiritual realm. This stubborn one is Mine! She is unbreakable!”
Then he scooped me up in His robe and held my bruised body. His robe soothed my skin as it wrapped around me. Then ministering angels stood behind my mom and step-dad, taking control of their hands, then holding and massaging them with balm to heal them.
We were all at fault and we all needed healing.
Not much time passed after the “please” incident, when it happened again. This time they only had to spank me for 3 hours before I would say “please.” Stubborn!!! That was the last time it had to happen and I have been pretty polite ever since.
I had carried the Victim Card on this one for my whole life…until Jesus exchanged it for a Victor Card! I always thought, “Poor me!” and “How could anyone do that to a toddler?” Jesus changed that in an instant to, “That’s right! I can withstand anything! I can survive anything! I can persevere through anything! I am unbreakable!” How powerful!
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
One of the most rewarding things I’ve heard was when an old friend, who had been keeping up with my blogs, told me that, on the days when she feels like she can’t make it or can’t even get out of bed, she thinks of my stories and thinks, “If Andi can do it, then so can I!”
THE greatest reward is knowing that sometimes my stories might encourage people to be brave, to be fearless, to experience life to the fullest, and to trust in a God who wants to give them an abundant life.
Quite often, I feel ridiculous putting my stories out there, but then someone negates that by telling me how they needed to read what I wrote for whatever reason. And if the painful stuff helps someone, then it was totally worth the pain.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://AndiPigottMartin.Substack.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andipigottmartin/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andipigottmartin/
Image Credits
Professional shot: Katie Warnke of GreenEarth Photography
Facility Shots: Andi Pigott Martin