Waiting for the redirectiron...

"I can remember being happy as a child - there came a time when I began to see that the world was a dark place and that things were not as they should be." Soon, Randy would get caught up in his own darkness. He read the Bible, and at the age of seventeen, fear gripped his heart as he considered his standing with God.

"I was going through a lot of hurt and loneliness; I didn't feel like I added up. I had one very close friend, and I was thinking about suicide; we talked about it, like I told her, "Maybe it's the only way out." And then I heard somewhere later, that if you do that, you only cause your, the people you leave behind, your family, your friends, a lot more pain."

Carla is originally from the Garden Valley First Nation in Manitoba. As a baby, she was given up for adoption and brought into a non-Native family. Early on it became apparent that something was different about her. She was soon diagnosed with cerebral palsy. With a gentle honesty, Carla shares about some of the challenges that she has faced, the encouragement she received from her adopted family, and the relationship that she has with her Creator.

Eric looks back over his life and stands in amazement at the direction it has taken since he turned his back on his rebellious sinful behavior and began to truly follow Jesus. He traded hopelessness and despair for a life of peace with God and reason to live.

When God disrupted Eric's plan to end his life, Eric knew it was time to acknowledge God's claim on him. A demonstration of humble service by a follower of Jesus got Eric thinking again. Then the influence of a concerned friend helped him see that he needed to follow Jesus without reservation.

Eric has fond memories of his childhood on the reserve. He heard about Jesus, and felt a desire to accept His gift of salvation, but had no one to walk with on that path. Instead, by the age of 16, he was into partying, and judged his life to be worthless. On a cold, dark night, he decided to end his life. But then something very strange happened on his way to the tower.

Don tells about the 1964 tidal wave that hit his village of Old Harbor, and about the people that gave their lives to save his village. He also shares about another disaster, his problem with anger. Don's family was being torn apart. When his wife finally gave him an ultimatum, he knew that he had to change.

Don grew up in Old Harbor, Alaska on Kodiak Island. He knew what it was like to live off the ocean, to hunt seal and bear. He also knew the darkness that effected the lives of people in his village... including his own family.

Jeannie' teenage son was murdered. She lived with great anger and hurt... and spent years trying to keep the killer behind bars. Despite her efforts, he was paroled. But one day, while ministering together with her husband in prison, God helped her to forgive the man who killed her son.

When her husband walked out, Jeannie was about to reach for the bottle to ease her pain, but instead reached out to Jesus. She was driven to Him by her realization that she wanted her marriage more than a drink. What happened next is amazing.

Jeannie and her husband, Harlan, were being driven apart by alcohol, and she finally divorced him. When nobody else wanted him, he came back, promising to change, and he did, seriously turning to the God of the Bible. Jeannie, however, did not believe him, and did everything she could to make him fall. Finally, she succeeded in driving him from the home into the arms of another woman. But the story doesn't end there.

Jeannie grew up in an alcoholic home, experiencing much abuse. She had a very low opinion of herself. As a young mother of three, she found herself loosed from an abusive marriage and managed, by determination, to complete her education and support her family. She fell back on alcohol but managed to hide it. She married Harlan, and things only got worse.

Florence's husband said to her, "Flo, you know what happened is that I got saved, I got saved." And you know, and of course he started preaching to me, "You know, you need the Lord too, you need to be, you need to know the Lord, you need to be forgiven." And I'm like,Yeah right. I'm thinking, you know, "I wonder how long this is going to last," and so I just kind of like laughed in his face.

Florence was raised up north in Manitoba in the small community of Red Sucker Lake. She bounced around between relatives until she was 17 when she met Conrad. He asked her to marry him. What happened next was very interesting.

Gordon's problems with the spirits weren't over just yet. He says, "When I went home, the stuff was still in my home; the odors, the foul voices, literally torment, and I had also a very serious problem with alcohol back in those days, from drinking constantly..."

While in the hospital recovering from a heart attack, Gordon said, "I was laying in bed and I heard these voices call out to me, 'Gordon, Gordon, Gordon'. I thought somebody was by the window; I got up. I had a heart monitor on - I wasn't connected to any tubing or anything - but I went to the window. Nobody was there, and then I realized the voice was right before me."

"Early on, in Milwaukee, I got into trouble as a young man with a lot of other friends. We weren't a gang as such, but we had a lot of trouble that we got into, to the point where it took me before the judge when I was 16 years old, 17 years old. And the judge gave me an ultimatum of either joining the military (this was back in 1962) or going into the reformatory for the trouble that I got into."

When he arrived home in St Theresa, Ernie was so troubled by the thought of dying that he couldn't rest. He decided to go to Garden Hill and talk with someone who he thought could help him with his problem. It was a man he heard talking about Jesus on the radio.

On a flight from Winnipeg to Garden Hill, Manitoba, Ernie was paralyzed by fear because of a question that he couldn't get out of his mind. "If you were to die at this very moment, where would you go?" He knew about Heaven and Hell, but he didn't think he go to Heaven. It's a serious question that caught his full attention... and he shares how he sought to answer it.

Ernie is from Garden Hill, MB an Island Lake community about 300 miles north of Winnipeg. Because of a sickness when he was a little boy, Ernie was unable to do some of the things that other kids could do. Early on he learned that education was very important, but alcohol was ruining his life. One day, he was confronted with a frightening question he couldn't answer... and he couldn't let it go.