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Found in a bathroom at two days old.

"Did I believe really that the stories in the bible were true? Not really sure."

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So, I was found two days old, in a bathroom in Seoul, Korea. I’m not sure if it was an angel or a stranger that actually brought me to an orphanage called Holt Orphanage. I lived in Holt Orphanage for five years. What I thought was amazing is that this Holt Orphanage was actually owned by a Christian family, so anybody who adopted there (actually I saw the paperwork that my parents had to sign), that if they were to adopt me, they had to sign that they were going to bring me up in the faith of Jesus Christ. So, to me, I feel that I am one of the fruits of their labor.

So, with that, I came over here in 1970, basically Pan-American at Kennedy airport in Hawaii. I was adopted by an Irish mother and Italian father and four instant brothers, so it was a very interesting journey that God was putting me on. I am just blessed because I know that children, at the age of five, are not so easily adopted. Everyone wants to adopt infants, so I was blessed. The biggest story with my parents I guess is that my mother always wanted to have four girls. She had four boys.

Growing up, I guess you could say I believed because I was told to believe. Did I believe really that the stories in the Bible were true? Not really sure.

I am now in my twenties, and my girlfriend invites me to a bible study. I said, “You know, I have always wanted to read the Bible.”

What happened was, I remember when I was thirteen, my brother went to California. We thought that maybe he was with a cult. Anyway, he comes back, and he has me praying with his ex-girlfriend on the couch and saying that if we don’t read the Bible we are going to hell, so that kind of really scared me. I picked up the Bible (King James version). When you’re thirteen, even when you are older, it is still hard to understand with “Thou, The, Thy,” but I started with Revelation. That scared the heck out of me, so I closed it up and really kind of put aside my faith at that point.

Now I’m in my mid-twenties. A girlfriend of mine invites me to a Bible study. I said, “I have always wanted to learn the Bible.” But again, I didn’t know much about it, but I was pessimistic, so I ended up going to a Bible study. The pastor’s wife was leading it. She’s very good in the teaching, and I would ask her a lot of questions. All of a sudden, one day, it just clicked like that! It was black and white. I was like, “Wow! Jesus Christ really is the Son of God, and I’m really a sinner.” You know, because thinking then that I was able to get into heaven, if that was the case, based on works, that I could have been able to get there, but I realized there was no one righteous, not even one. Not even me, and so, I realized the fact that, wow, I do need Jesus Christ in my life. I need him to be my savior because I am a sinner, and I need forgiveness. He died on the cross for me. He rose from the dead. He fulfilled what he promised. He became my Lord.

So really, my life, I guess you could say, has changed since then because I know that if I didn’t have that experience God wouldn’t bless me with what He has today because I have a great story to tell. If God blessed somebody who grew up in an average American home, where they had the finances or the education to go to college, and now, if they turned around and wrote a book or released a CD album and wrote over one hundred inspirations, would you see a testimony there being greater than what my testimony today is? The fact that I was found two days old in a bathroom, I was abandoned, I was left there. With the pro-life I say at least that was a better option than getting aborted. I feel that He had to give me that beginning in order to make it a greater testimony of me today, to share the gospel.

Jean Marie - Found in a bathroom at two days old.

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