I Was Raped – Then I Found Jesus

Sara grew up in a home where her father was addicted to drugs. He napped often and tended to spend his days wandering around aimlessly. As a result, he struggled to pay for the house in which his family lived. Sometimes, he resorted to stealing to keep the house.

Because of the father’s lifestyle, those around the family kept their distance. The entire family suffered rejection because of him.

Deep down, Sara was a fighter. Weary from all the rejection, she sought ways to gain respect and feel valued. She found a job, giving some of her earnings—as did her two brothers—to help the family financially.

Wanting to show her brothers and others how strong she was, she became friends with a group of men recently released from prison as well as others with less-than-desirable lifestyles. She found acceptance in that group, where she proved to be a loyal and honorable friend. But without realizing it, she gradually began to live like them.

Soon, she was doing drugs and drinking alcohol. Her effort to move out from under the influence of her father’s addictions had led to her own addictions.

“I was in the middle of the same swamp as my father,” she recalled. Then a man in Sara’s friend group raped her. “Didn’t I want to fight against this life of humiliation?” Sara asked herself. “What made me lose?”

In the middle of another lonely night, Sara pulled out a notebook and a pen and began writing a letter to God. She described the pain and the misery and the lack of value that consumed her. She signed the letter, “Your tired 24-year-old daughter.”

She tucked the letter away where no one would find it. The letter was her secret.

One day, Sara was furious at her life and hating herself. Then a friend messaged her and said she had met two kind women who had told her interesting things about God.

“Do you want me to introduce you to them?” the friend asked.

Sara said yes, and the friend arranged a meeting in the middle of a busy park.

As the group talked, one of the women told Sara, “God has seen your letter.”

Sara was stunned. Only she knew about the letter.

“God has come to save you,” the woman continued. “Do you want to accept God’s salvation?”

Sara nodded, and the women prayed with her. Sara later learned that the two women were associated with our Channel 7.

Sara’s first step toward a new life was giving up drugs and alcohol. “It was not a hard thing to do,” she told us. “I saw that God was fighting for me, so I got rid of addiction easily. I was victorious because God always wins. There is no defeat in God.”

Sara reads the Bible regularly now—“line by line,” she said. Her feelings of inferiority and worthlessness are gone. She has become one of our viewers. Through the teaching of our programs, Sara realized that even though her earthly father had rejected her, her Heavenly Father had forgiven her and made her a citizen of Heaven.”

She even went back to her old group of friends. But this time, she’s the one influencing lives. She shares the Gospel with them, and several have accepted Jesus as their Savior.

“I must preach to people!” she exclaimed.

Sara sat down recently and wrote another letter to God. She described how she is full of hope. She explained how it feels to live infused with the joy of God. She wrote that all her wounds have been healed. And then she signed the letter, “Daughter of God and the Father.”