Bonnie: “Our lives had been going in two different directions for months. He had his drinking friends and I had my druggie friends. We thought we were having so much fun even though our evenings would end up in a fight or my husband would pass out somewhere. ‘What kind of life is that?’ I thought as I moved toward the television one night to find a movie. I was waiting for my husband to go to sleep so I could carry out my plan to end my life. As I turned the channel this way and that way, I suddenly heard the voice of a man say, ‘You may be out there strung out on drugs thinking your life is hopeless and useless. What you need is Jesus Christ.’ ‘Who is this guy?’ I thought. I moved closer to the TV and heard him say it didn’t matter what we had done, God would forgive us and He had a plan and purpose for my life.

Tears rolled down my cheeks; tears of sadness for how I had been living my life; tears of repentance. For the first time I understood I was a sinner and needed a Savior. I asked Jesus to forgive me and come into my life and make me the person He wanted me to be. I then raised my hands to Heaven and told the Lord that if He could do anything with my messed up life, it was His because I could not handle life anymore. I did not know what I had done at that moment; that in the church world I was now ‘born again.’ All I know is that a peace came over me that I had never known before.

No longer did I have a plan to end my life that night. I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams that my husband and I would one day be standing side-by-side in a baptismal pool in a little country church; me the former pot-head and him the future preacher.”