Marie Elmgren

Twenty-six years ago, when I sat among these people for the first time, I was a discouraged, miserable woman. My husband was in the county jail waiting to be sent away to McNeill Island for a long time, because he had committed a serious crime. I was left to face the future alone, with three small children, and I didn’t know which way to turn.

I didn’t have any friends. They all turned their backs on me the day that I stood disgraced before the world. Those days were sad. Many a time, I was awake all night long, and I would look into the faces of those three little children, wondering how it would all end. I knew that it would not be long until they would be scattered to the four winds; I wondered what would become of them.

I had a Christian mom who sent me to Sunday school when I was a child—I can’t remember the time that I didn’t go to church. And the first time I ever saw the inside of a jail was when I went to see my husband. In that sad hour God let the light of this mighty Gospel shine upon my pathway.

My husband received salvation. Some Apostolic Faith people had gone up to the jail and were holding meetings. That caused him to get on his knees and call on God for mercy. I could see the change in his face when I went up to visit him the next day. He asked me to go to a meeting, so I went. I sat in the back of the church, sad and discouraged. I listened to the testimonies. I heard people tell how God had helped them. Some had been in worse predicaments than I was in. Somehow, as the meeting progressed, I lost sight of the misery in my heart. I felt a glimmer of hope—the first in many months. When the meeting was over they invited me to their altar and prayed with me and for me. God came into my life and He saved my soul and planted peace and joy and victory over sin in my heart.

Just a little while after that, my husband stood before the authorities to receive his sentence. These people were praying and holding onto God for him—and he was set free. God, in His mercy, undertook and delivered him from that awful charge against him. I went up there and they opened the prison doors and once more I saw the Bible, the Word of God, literally fulfilled: the prison doors were opened just because of prayer.

For twenty-six years, that old past has never come up again. It has not always been smooth sailing since that day, but I have always felt the Everlasting Arms under me. God has been good to us. When I first came to the Lord I didn’t seem to have a thing in the world—my health was gone, my home was gone, everything was gone, but today I have everything to praise God for. We have a happy home here in the city, a well-paying business, and a host of friends. Best of all, we have the fellowship of God’s people and His salvation in our hearts. What more could one ask for?