I was a lying, selfish and lazy teenager. I was crying over my fate because of my parent’s divorce and i wanted to commit suicide. Not having the courage to finish with life, I went to study the piano in a school of jazz music. To be like buddies, I got addicted to shit. The day my friends switched to cocaine, I decided to stop everything and go back to live with my mother. She greeted me with open arms, supporting my lack crises at night when I woke up yelling. I was 23, I had no friends, no work, no God…

My mother appealed to a priest who told me he needed me. It was the trigger. Me, poor drug addict, could I be useful to someone? I went there. I had to help Catholic help by meeting street kids. We read the Bible with them; and i began to believe in this Jesus who asked us to love one another.

Someone told me that if he had my chance, he would have studied . So i started studying and got a master’s degree in computer science. However, during my 2nd year of DEUG, in Marseille, a sadness dwelt in my heart, I thought that Jesus, whom I found amazing by reading his life in the Gospels, loved everyone except me. I then jumped under the subway. And although two wagons passed over me, I had only a few stitches on my knee and head. I had fainted and when I woke up in the hospital, I felt the Love of Jesus for me and that upset my life. I have gone from intolerable suffering to true joy, a profound joy in spite of the trials of life to go through because, as the Bible says so well : “Nothing separates us from the Love of Christ” (Romans 8:39). I asked for forgiveness for my past and I welcomed the love that Jesus wanted to give me.

Since then, I have been active in church where I have found real brothers and sisters, I pray daily. I also got a CDI and I have an exciting job. Moreover, at great gatherings, I could experience that what Jesus did for me, he did it for thousands of people. I thank God for his love and patience with us!

May God bless you, you who read my testimony, give you the grace to meet him so that he will upset your life and fill you with happiness as he has done for me.

Laurence