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MALE VOICE 1: You know what’s amazing is that someone told me—a guy by the name of Lowell Kinnion [phonetic], he’s a youth pastor, he told me—he said “I want you to read these like it’s God’s love letters to you”. You know and so I would read the Bible and I didn’t really understand what I was reading, you know, but he—but he would—he would take the time to sit with me and go over these things and tell me about how Jesus died on the cross. And as I read stories about how Jesus loved on people in—throughout the Bible, like even people that you would have thought why would he be there, you know, with a prostitute. Do you know what I mean? How—doesn’t—I used to think doesn’t God pick people that are almost there. Do you know what I mean? Like—but he sees something in us and the Bible made me realize that God has a plan for me and it’s not to be depressed and it’s not to be empty. And as I read more and more stories in the Bible I began to realize that there’s hope for my life and that this God that—you know if—this God that was sitting with the lady who was caught in the act of adultery, that that’s the same God that loves me, you know, and it just became real to me. And so the Bible has changed my life. The Bible has changed my life forever you know.

MALE VOICE 2: I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were missionaries and a pastor and my dad was a pastor of a church and you know I was really involved with ministry and things like that but I really didn’t have a personal relationship. You know I was more riding on my parent’s coattail but I was really involved. You know I didn’t—and I was looking to everything else to fill that void in my life. You know I had an emptiness in there and through friends to be accepted and things like that and it’s not until I hit the bottom, you know, that I cried out to God and he chanced my life and, you know, he filled that emptiness in my life and I felt this lift in my life. And once scripture that really—I mean actually I guess a whole chapter, Solomon’s 23 is—you know is something that I always read and reminds me that—you know that God is with me through my trials and the things that I go through. And in this one scripture—I mean chapter that I’m really hold close to me.

Joseph Rojas: I was a drug addict. I had a $400 a day cocaine addiction. I didn’t really believe in God, you know, to be honest, growing up. My mother would take me to Mass like once a year and that was like Easter, you know, and then sometimes on a Christmas Eve, you know, she would take us, but I grew up without a father. My father used to beat my mother and my only memories of my father were of the last time he beat her, you know, and I was 3 and a half years old and I was ten feet away. So I grew up with that image in my mind and without having a father in my life, a father figure, you know, to be there for me.

And so at 14 years old was the first time that I tried cocaine. 12 years old was the first time I thought about suicide. I was a fat kid growing up, you know, I never got picked for any teams. As you can see, I don’t look like Brad Pitt, you know what I mean? I always struggled with a weight problem, you know, and people made find of me a lot and so I got put down quite a bit, and drugs were a way of coping with that. It was a way for me to deal with the pain. By the age of 21 years old, I had a $400 a day cocaine addiction, and by around 22 years old I was a 4-time convicted felon, by the age of 22. And there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t think about committing suicide. I stole from my own mother to get high, a mother that did nothing but love me and be there for me. But drugs had a hold of me.

Three years before my 21st birthday my mother met this lady that took her to church. My mom was so desperate looking for help for me that this lady just said, “You need to come to church and hear about Jesus,” and my mom went and gave her life to Christ and she came back and she would always tell me about God.

Anyway, one day I just decided that I was done living. At the age of 22 I decided that I was done living and I was going to end my life. I was tired of hurting my mother. I took a lethal dose of cocaine to stop my heart. My mother had a mother’s intuition, and she left work and came home. She wasn’t the one who was supposed to find me, but she left and came home because she was felt something was wrong. As she walked in, I tried to walk over to her to tell her how sorry I was for breaking her heart, and I took about two steps and then I had a heart attack in front of my mother on her living room floor. She was screaming and crying out to this God in Heaven that I didn’t believe in. In the back of the ambulance I felt the power of God, and I said, “Jesus, would you save me?” I said, “I don’t know how to pray, I don’t even know a Bible verse. I don’t know what to say to you but if you could make some sense out of my words then I would gladly give my life to you tonight.” That was the first time in my life that I ever felt like I got picked, and it was the first time in my life I ever knew the love of a father.

I started going to church with my mom and there was this youth pastor that spoke into my life, and he began to mentor me and tell me more about Jesus, you know. Today I’m a husband that honors my wife, Laurie, and I’m madly in love with her. We’ve been married eight year, and after eight years of marriage my wife still gives me butterflies in my stomach when I look at her. I’m a father that loves my kids more than life itself. Seven months ago I led my own father to Jesus. And God did that for me. But that’s where I was and this is where I am now, and that’s how powerful God is.