Five testimonies, five baptisms

Natalie’s story of prison, addiction and grace – one of five lives changed at a single Sunday baptism.

Community Church Forest & Wye, in Cinderford, Gloucestershire, recently watched five people step into the baptistry on the same Sunday morning, each arriving there by a strikingly different road. It’s just over a year since the church, pastored by Counties Church Planter Tim Cracknell, moved into its new building, a former sports club and snooker hall on the edge of town. On this Sunday, the same room was packed for something even more significant than bricks and mortar.

As the congregation sang Glorious Day, five people took their turn – four women and one man, ranging from a couple in mid-life to someone 50 years into her faith. Each spoke for a few minutes about who they were before Jesus, how they met Him, and the difference He has made, before a friend or leader read a verse of Scripture and prayed over them.

In her own words

Natalie’s baptism

Natalie’s story was told with disarming honesty. Brought up by atheist parents, she said God had been “calling” her for as long as she could remember, but that she had “a heart of stone” and repeatedly pushed Him away.

The turning point came in the most unlikely of places: an overcrowded prison cell in Venezuela, in the aftermath of a suicide attempt that hadn’t succeeded. “A defeated version of me looked around and recognised that I should be dead, and that I wasn’t,” she said. “The only explanation was God.” In desperation, she prayed for the first time in her life and tried to strike a deal with Him: get her out of that place, and she would do whatever He wanted. A transfer she had been told would take years came through in a week – and, true to old habits, she quickly forgot her promise.r

Missionaries at her next prison spoke to her about Jesus, but she “took it all with a pinch of salt.” Years later, while visiting a friend, everything shifted without warning. “It hit me sudden and total, like Jesus Himself had projected directly into my chest,” she said. “There was no build-up, no warning, no context. One moment nothing, the next Him.” She ran sobbing into her friend’s kitchen, certain that everyone needed to know Jesus was real, and was met largely with confusion.

What followed was a lon g season of searching elsewhere – Eastern philosophy, other faiths, anything that avoided “the weight of the cross.” But nothing matched what she had felt in that kitchen, and it was her boyfriend who eventually named what she had been resisting, asking simply whether she believed in Jesus and that He had died on the cross. When she admitted she did, he told her plainly: “You’re a Christian.” Like Peter, she denied it.

Meanwhile, addiction crept in “dressed as relief, as escape, as the one thing that understands you” – until, in her words, “it has its hands around your throat.” The breaking point came in her truck, exhausted, having not slept in days. “Broken, I finally acknowledged that only Jesus could save me,” she said. “I surrendered my life to him… and the message I got loud and clear was: go to church.”

“He doesn’t wait for you to clean yourself up before He comes to find you. He comes and finds you in the mess.”

Natalie stood before the congregation two months clean and sober. “If you recognise any part of my story,” she told the church, “the running, the hiding, the thing that promises comfort but delivers chains – there is a way out.”

Four other stories, one morning

Emi found faith early, in a small Methodist church that followed her family from an English village to Hong Kong. It drifted quietly during university and her marriage to husband John, not through crisis, but simple neglect. Losing both her parents within 11 months brought her back: “John, and God through John, helped me through that.” A church Christianity Explored course finished the journey. “I sought forgiveness,” she said, “and yet it was already done. All I needed to do was trust God again.”

Lisa became a Christian more than 50 years ago but had never been baptised. A former clergy wife, her 38-year marriage ended two and a half years ago, leaving her feeling “devastated… like a total failure.” Prayer and time helped her see what she had long believed but rarely felt: “Even when we feel we’ve given up on ourselves, God never, ever gives up on us.” Her baptism, she said, was “an act of surrender… laying down my shame, and forgiving myself” – a step not into perfection, but into hope.

Lucius grew up Catholic in Rome but carried fear and shame from an abusive childhood, convinced he was beyond forgiveness. A chance conversation “planted a seed,” and Bible-reading followed, alongside a TV series on the life of Jesus that he watched with his wife Katie. He recognised himself in Jesus’ compassion for the Samaritan woman at the well: “No person is too far gone for God’s mercy.” Through a hard season in their marriage, both found their way to faith, Katie first, then Lucius. “I no longer feel alone,” he said, “because I know God is with me through every struggle.”

Emi’s baptism

Lisa’s baptism

Lucius’ baptism

A God who notices the overlooked

Bringing the morning to a close, the visiting speaker preached from 2 Kings 4, the story of a Shunammite woman never even named in Scripture, yet whose hospitality and faith God responds to in extraordinary ways. “For God, there is no one who is too small,” he told the congregation. “Everybody matters.”

It was a fitting word for a morning that had shown four very different lives: a woman restored after grief, a survivor of addiction, a woman marking 50 years of faith, and a man who once believed himself unforgivable. Each was noticed. Each was met.

As they stepped into the water, the church sang In Christ Alone. Whatever the road that had brought them there, each left it the same way, declaring, in front of family and friends, that they belonged to Jesus now. To read more about Natalie’s story, check out her book ‘Escape from Venezuela’s Deadliest Prison’, available on Amazon.