Nicole Canania

            I was born and raised in Baxter, Tennessee where I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church for about 8 years. Some problems started happening with the church, and my family decided to step away from the church and find a new home church. I went for a good year, never stepping into another church. My family then found a church called Living Hope Church, a charismatic church. At this church I was saved by the age of 10 and stayed there in the youth until I was 16. When I turned sixteen I actually got offended by my own pastor. It was Sunday morning and my sister-in-law had a sever asthma attack and of course people were getting up to attend her and see if she needed any help. About 10 min. of this going on my pastor completely stopped preaching and asked one of the ushers to see if my sister-in-law needed any medical treatment and if not, for everyone to leave her alone and come back into the sanctuary. This bugged me the most because my sister-in-law actually asked them to pray for her. From here everything just went down hill for me. At this time I met what will be my first husband. He did not believe in anything and his life seemed to be great. So, being a rebellious teenager, I decided to take the same route. We dated for 5 years and than we were married. Now the marriage is far from blessed. I actually told my parents two weeks before we got married and then we skipped town and took of to Ft. Riley, Kansas where he was stationed in the Army. From here life was nothing but a complete blur. We both stayed drunk and did weed from time to time. Even came to the point where he decided to have late night affairs on me at the local strip clubs and bar. Four months into our marriage he got the deployment papers to be sent of to war. I went back home once he was deployed and just worked and partied all the time. I was always giving my family excuses to never go back to any kind of church. I finally got a call that we had received a housing unit at Ft. Riley, so I was back on the road. I finally settled in and of course kept partying. Finally the divorce came a long, and two months later I found a new friend.

            When I met my current husband, we both were far from church and did every sin you can name under the sun. From here we moved from Ft. Riley, Kansas to Pevely, MO and found a new home and his mother talked us into going to her church. A week later we became re-born Christians. Now do not get me wrong we are far from sinless, but God does work miracles. If God can create success out our lives than he can create success in anyone’s life.