Alex's Story

I remember growing up always feeling less than, less than by big brother, less than my big sister
My name is Alex and this is my story
My parents had four kids and I was the third born
From a very early age I was behaving pretty absurd with telling lies and making things up and not fitting into the family unit
From then on in it was just tried alcohol, drugs, discovered heroine
Ended up in homes, children's homes, ended up in prison obviously for behaving wrong, for stealing things, for robbing places, for taking property that wasn't mine
Through the 12
step program I was introduced to the word 'God'
I had heard it many times in my life before but I had no meaning of it and no tie to it
I would basically say that I was introduced to faith through the 12
step programme
If it weren't for the Christian people, when I came into this church, if it weren't for the people that opened up that'd never seen me before in their life
For me, I had very low self esteem because of the lifestyle that I was living, and these people helped me build my self esteem back up
Because I used to say things like, 'Why would these people be interested in me
' 'What would they want, welcome me into their church
' 'Why are they not shoving me out
' Why are they not saying, 'he's a drug dealer
'
Do you know what I mean
'He's been in prison
' But they weren't doing that, they were welcoming me in and that was the beautiful thing about it
And from then on it was just about me coming to believe
Me coming to believe
Oh, I've changed, I've become a much better person
I've been softer, I've been made gentler towards other people, been made compassionate, been made patient, been made tolerant
I'm really a family person now, whereas I take pride in my children, I take responsibility for what they're doing in their lifestyles and try to guide them with being a right good example
I always do an inventory at night to look at myself and find out if I've been a better person than I was the day before, you know
So Jesus has brought all that into my life
My son was in addiction
My son was in drug addiction for eight years
But through me, coming to church, he started to notice things that were changing my life
He noticed the difference in my life and he kept on asking me, 'what are you getting out of church, dad
' And I says you need to come to church to find out
He tried the Alpha Course, and through the Alpha Course, he's now came to Jesus, himself
He's a man, a man got nailed to the cross for my sins, for everybody's sins in this world
So, I'm quite courageous, and I'm quite bold about putting stuff that I go to church on Facebook and stuff like that, so to let people know where the change comes from
And so that, if any of them's interested, if any of them likes to see the change, and they would like to change, then jump on board, come along and try it