The September 11th attacks had a profound impact on my life, but actually the story starts a month before the attacks, when a very good friend of mine named Marina came to visit me in New York. She was living out here in California, but she came to visit and we began a relationship at that time. When the attacks happened a month later, she was really there for me and she got me through it. I was living about a thousand feet from the World Trade Center at the time, in a school housing.
I felt the more than I saw the towers have the impact with the planes and when they fell down, I had never been in an earthquake at that point in my life, but it remains to this day the two biggest earthquakes I've been in even after many years here in California. It was really terrifying, but after that time I lived through it again every night when I slept and sometimes when I didn't sleep, I slept very little over about the next year after that, and I made a lot of bad choices just because I was so badly scarred by it.
And I was seeing a psychiatrist and he put me on some drugs and it didn't really help, but he didn't have anything else to offer me. I graduated that May and I got an over night job, not really doing what I studied for, but I was just such a mess. At the end of 2002 I made a decision that I needed to change my environment. I packed whatever I could in the suitcase and I hopped on a plane and I moved out here to California. I still wasn't part of a church at that time and I didn't join a church right away. It was several years before spirituality reentered my life in any way.
I was flat broke. I spent a few years spending more money than I had, and so in a desperate attempt to correct that situation, I answered an ad in the newspaper to open an insurance agency, of all things. I went to the office of the insurance company in question and I met with the district manager. He answered all of my questions and allayed all my fears and so I decided to do it. I worked with him for about one year, and he eventually asked me to join him in a Bible study at his home that he was starting. So I said, "Yes." And so he and I studied together for about 14 months and it completely changed my life.
I didn't realize it at the time, but the studies that I was doing with Hugh were the Amazing Facts Study Guides. The most amazing thing about it to me was that the Bible contained things that were so radically different than I had ever been taught. I felt such a burden inside me after even just two or three weeks of studying. I felt a burden to share it with other people because it was so radical, and it was so different and it brought me such joy I guess to know these things. I almost felt like I stumbled upon a secret and I wanted to share it with as many people as I could. Coming here to AFCO is a life changing experience, I haven't regretted coming here for a moment.
We met a homeless man when we were handing out books in downtown Sacramento one sabbath afternoon, and he was very interested in the literature and when we told him about the meetings that were coming up he was very interested in those as well. So we have befriended him, we've studied with him and we've brought him to these meetings and we've seen such an amazing change in his life in such a short period of time as he has learnt directly from the Bible all these amazing truths of God. He's agreed to be baptized. Amazing Facts played an integral part of my spiritual walk and my conversion experience. It would not have been even close to the same without them.
They reach people in every walk of life, through their webcasts, their videos, their publications, the AFCO Program. They are so multi faceted that they really take the gospel mission very seriously. Amazing Facts is this beacon of light into a dark world, bring people out of the darkness and into the light of the gospel.
Narrator: For more than 40 years Amazing Facts has been reaching out to people like Stephen right where they are through our many Bible study resources, internet web pages, print publications, radio and TV programs, as well as public prophecy seminars, won't you consider partnering with us by sending your tax deductible donation to Amazing Facts. PO BOX 1058 Rosville, California, 95678, or donate securely online at amazingfacts.org