God Delivered Me From My Great Mountain of Pain!
Dear Mr. Stringer,I received a copy of your book from you after the S.O.S. banquet. I had always heard so much about it and after JJ read it the first time, he kept on telling me how much I needed to read it. I really wanted to wait to write you after I had finished reading the book, but I am so excited about what the Lord is doing, I just had to write you now. I am in the middle of chapter 3, and I have been so touched by the first two chapters that I cant wait to read what left in the book! You see, the girl who you spoke about in the email was me. I cant say I had experienced the same pain she had but, I do know that in my life, I had experienced the pain of abandonment many times in my life. I was born out of an affair in Indonesia and was given up for adoption as I was born. My adoptive parents divorced when I was three and I never knew the father who’s last name I carried. He left us for another woman and my mom moved back to the U.S. at this time. My mother remarried when i was 4 or 5. It was difficult for me to see where I fit in after they had their own child. I resented my little brother because he looked like them and came from them. His last name was the same of my step-fathers. It was too much for my little brain to process. During the age I was a teenage girl, my father who raised me, began to drink really heavily. Actually I think i just realized he had been drinking the whole time. Because the part of the book where you wrote about your father teaching you how to swim, really took me back. It took me back to a place where I remember hating my father for picking me up from school. You see, he carried a beer cooler in the back of his truck and he would stop periodically to use the restroom and get another beer as he would drive me home from school. Before going home, he would always have to make a journey to the beer store, which was 20 mins out of town, because we lived in a dry county. I dreaded this and like you, I would ask myself, if he really loved me why would he drive me around drunk.
I know I shared a lot of my testimony, but I really wanted you to know who was reading your book and who was responding to the call you make in your book. As I read it, I realize that God is working in my life greatly. All I am required to do is offer myself and do it with all of my heart- with every ounce of myself sold out to the God who delivered me from my great mountain of pain. I am so blessed to have found myself at S.O.S. ministries. I believe they were my great “Rebecca”, as you say, during my wandering aimlessly in the desert. I have been given the gift of eternity through them and I remember the first year I walked with Christ, with them by my side. My soul was parched and every message that I heard J.J. or Carmen deliver brought tears to my eyes. I cried continuously because I had waited all my life to hear the message they brought. My eyes tear up, as I just think of this now. I am so excited to see what God is going to do in my own life, because you see, your book has brought revelation to myself. I know God is going to use me to help restore others like myself, others who were abandoned and left to figure it all out by themselves. I want to be a beacon of light in the darkness, a Rebecca leading others to the well spring of eternal life, the vessel used to bring healing to the broken hearted and help bind up the wounds.
I am only 26 years old, but I can atest to the great things that God is doing through S.O.S. ministries. My heart also sees the reason why JJ looks up to you so much. My heart cry is the same as yours and I wanted you to know how your words touched my heart so and reaffirmed what I knew God was saying to me! Thank you so much for your obedience and your uncompromising life to God! I cant wait to write you back after I have finished reading your book!!! May God continue using you to fan the flame within us all!!!!
With many thanks,
Megan