Michigan

Stella Hawkins sat on her doorstep in a drunken stupor. It hadn't always been that way. Her mother had been a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but Stella had chosen a different path—one that left God behind. At 16 years of age, Stella began experimenting with alcohol. After 24 years of traveling its insidious path, she found herself sitting on her doorstep in hopelessness and despair.

Stella's alcoholism and drug addiction led authorities to place her daughter in foster homes and her mother had recently died, adding to her misery. Yet, on those steps three years ago, weeping in painful sorrow, Stella saw a glimmer of hope as she felt God's arms of love reach out to her.

An inner voice kept telling her to read her mother's Bible. As she sat there with a beer can in one hand and the Bible in the other, she kept saying to herself, I can't understand this! I can't do it! But deep inside she heard,"You can learn this!"

One week later, she picked up the phone and dialed the Owosso Adventist Church, but as soon as she heard a voice on the other end she froze and hung the phone up. One Sabbath, she walked about three miles to the church where her journey to recovery and healing began.

By 2003, Stella had stopped drinking and has been victorious to this day. It was during Alive '05, an Amazing Facts' satellite evangelistic presentation, that Stella responded to Doug Batchelor's call by standing to her feet. She later said she had always wanted to stand for Jesus and was so elated to finally do it.

We had the privilege of leading Stella in preparation for baptism this past March. Recently, Stella responded to the needs of others by selling her jewelery and doll collection, giving the money to purchase Bibles for the Masai people in Kenya. What a wonderful example of the power of God to transform lives! He's still at work, not only in Stella's life, but in her daughter's as well.

Curt DeWitt, Owosso Church pastor