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 Jessica had hit rock bottom: no money, no food, no rent. With a toddler and an infant to care for and her husband in prison, she began to wrack her brain to think of who could help her. She had burned bridges in the past. “I started thinking of who could help me… my grandma? My dad? Friends? Teachers?” Sobbing, she finally came to one conclusion. “There’s nobody on this earth who can help me.” And that’s when it clicked. She said it again aloud, “There’s no one on this earth who can help me.”
“The only answer I got was God,” recalls Jessica. “Who else could I go to and say, ‘Here are my problems. Take them from me and help me move on with my life’? Jesus is the only one who could help me unload my burden. The greatest thing was that I’m sure he was more than happy to hear my voice-even if it was to say ‘Help me! I need you I can’t do it anymore.’’’
As her mind raced through these conclusions, Jessica remembered back to the church service she had attended at St. Mark’s just a few months ago, after Monica Oke an Angel Tree coordinator had contacted her about Angel Tree and invited her to church.
Jessica remembered the love and compassion they had received at Christmas time when her children, Nick and Alexis, received gifts from Monica and the people in her small group. She remembered how much the toys and clothes had meant, especially coming from people who had been total strangers to her. Jessica knew what to do.
“I called Monica on the spur of the moment and asked her if I could come back to church with her,” explains Jessica. “The first couple of sermons I came to seemed like they were written just for me. Every sentence was something that I needed to listen to.”
Jessica asked Jesus into her heart that spring. And she and her two children began
faithfully attending St. Mark’s. Meanwhile, she and Monica also began spending regular time together in a mentoring relationship. For Christmas the following year, Monica gave her a new Bible and a copy of The Purpose-Driven Life. As a result of her study and the time they spent together, Jessica not only asked Jesus to forgive her for her sins, she also began seeking out forgiveness from friends that she had hurt in the past.
“I can’t say enough about Angel Tree,’ says Jessica. “There is something just really touching when a stranger volunteers time and gives your children presents. But I would say more about what it’s done for me in the last 3 years. God’s just shown up at the worst times in my life and taken care of things for me. And Angel Tree has changed so much. It’s changed the way I treat my kids. It’s changed my whole life- style.”
She’s also learned that there’s a purpose behind everything we go through. That’s why when Jessica shared her testimony in front of the church congregation on Easter at St. Mark’s after her conversion, she was able to share that it was only through one of the worst experiences of her life, her husband going to prison, and Angel Tree ministering to her and her children as a result, that she came to know Christ. “No matter what happens there’s a purpose behind it,” Jessica says with a steady assurance.
Jessica’s children are still not old enough to understand the significance of Angel Tree or of how the Gospel has touched their mother’s life. But they are growing up in the home of a mom who now knows Jesus and is striving to live out what that relationship with Christ means to her everyday life. And that opens up the possibility of an entirely different future for Alexis and Nick all because of the simple faithfulness exercised by volunteers like Monica, and Angel Tree. |
