The Rescue, the Rescuer, and the Touch
"Pack your bags," Celita’s pen-pal of one year told her upon learning the woman’s husband was out of town for the weekend. "You’re coming with me, after 22 years of torment and suffering, your day of deliverance has come!" Celita did just that, piling her stuff in her pen-pal’s car for three-hour trip to a new home, a new life.
Celita’s journey, however, began more than 50 years earlier. Raised in a loving Christian home, her father died when she was very young. "Why should God enjoy him in heaven while me and mom are suffering down here all alone?" she questioned. Finding no answer she became angry and rebellious, that is until she was invited by a friend to a gospel music concert. There she accepted Jesus as her personal Savior and began looking for a church which taught the whole Bible. She found the Adventist church in a Yellow Pages advertisement.
"I knew that God’s chosen people, the Jews, worshiped on Saturday," Celita explained. "I reasoned that if Jesus kept the Sabbath, I would be okay to do so." Celita found a church of loving Christians. Heavily jeweled, with lots of make-up, a thigh-splitting mini-skirt, and long-red fingernails, she was accepted just as she was. "At a member's home for dinner, we didn’t talk about everyday things," Celita recalled. "We talked about Jesus, His soon coming, and heaven." The next Sabbath she dressed moder ately. After a series of Bible studies, Celita was baptized.
At her new church family everyone was married. She prayed that God would send a help-mate to her, too. She went to school, then moved to another community for a better job and transferred her membership to a new church. Celita shared her faith with her mother, and soon she, too, was baptized.
A time of testing came upon Celita at the new church. The pastor preached Sister White from the pulpit with one or two Scriptures thrown into his sermons. She asked him to preach more from the Bible. He would not. Finally, she left that church. There was no place else to go by public transportation, so she was now without a church home.
God had not answered her prayers for a help-mate, so it was during this time Celita decided to take matters into her own hands. She met and married a man who was a back-slidden pastor of three churches. The couple then had two children. Although she loved her husband, he frightened her into submission, using scripture to justify abusive behavior of her and the children. He was also into pornography, adultery, and perversion. She began to take them to domestic violence shelters for relief from his cruelty.
"I got down on my knees and asked God to forgive me for all of my sins of anger and rebellion against Him and to deliver me and my children from this evil man." Shortly after this Janice Anderson found Celita’s name in a magazine and began to correspond with her. Celita’s husband was extremely jealous and controlling, they had to correspond with each other in secrecy.
"I discovered that Janice was a member of a nearby Christian church, but had not accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior," and began explaining the plan of salvation and the two engaged in Bible study. Janice discovered the Sabbath truth. It was when Celita was in the hospital that Janice visited the Galesburg Seventh-day Adventist Church. She told the elders there about her friend and they came to visit. After Celita’s release from the hospital the two of them began Bible studies with local elder, John Tuthill, II.
It was time for camp meeting, "I learned from Dr. Merlin Burt of the Ellen G. White Estate, that Sister White never wanted her writings to be placed above God’s Word," reported Celita. Her faith was restored in the messenger God sent to the church. Baptized on October 14, 2006, Celita recalled how fortunate she is to have a friend like Janice.
Now Janice and Celita have started a tract ministry, handing out 500 tracts per month in the Galesburg area. You'll want to hear more about that ministry. Download the audio file of their story from Media Ministry or sign up for the Touch Every 1 for Jesus podcast.