THE TESTIMONY OF A PRAYING WIFE – In 1984 Kathy Heredia’s life was on the road to nowhere. Having grown up on the mean streets of Los Angeles she had many heartaches and tragedies in her life. She experienced friends dying from gang violence and drug overdoses, a father bound to alcohol, and dealt with years of neglect from her mother abandoning the family. All this was hard to handle. Kathy was bound to alcohol herself, and having been married to a heroin addict for five years, she really was living first hand the life of a junkie’s wife. Kathy was truly “tired of being sick and tired”. Kathy began to look for happiness in different places – a job, an aerobics class, she even had Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to her home at one time hoping they had the answer to her misery. Raised as a Catholic she began to attend more masses and even gave up smoking at an Ash Wednesday service. She partied with her husband Johnny whenever she got the chance, consuming as much alcohol as her body would allow. Nothing seemed to give her the peace she was looking for. Then in April of 1984, Kathy’s life would be radically changed forever. On April 1, 1984 Kathy and her husband received news that their two-year old son, Thomas, had cancer. But it was during these four months of hospitalization, before Thomas passed away, that another man came into Kathy’s life. His name is Jesus Christ. She asked him into her heart and he began to fill her. Kathy immediately began to tell others of the love of Christ and many of her friends and family began to get saved. But one who refused was the closest one to her – her husband Johnny. After their son’s death he began injecting more and more heroin, eventually moving out and leaving her alone with their four-year old Johnny Jr., but Kathy would not give up. She had received a promise from God that her husband would be saved, so she began to intercede for him. Johnny’s life seemed to get worse; getting arrested a couple of times and catching Hepatitis, he moved back home and began to notice a change in his wife. She began to bribe him into going to church and bible-study by allowing him to go and party with his friends without an argument from her, believing that sooner or later God would do something like touch him in some way, but it just seemed hopeless. She began to waiver and asked the Pastor’s wife if she could get a divorce. She was told to be patient and trust the Lord for a Miracle, so she prayed. After conniving her husband to go to a bible-study meeting, she was blessed to see him afterwards ask for prayer, that God would deliver him from drug-addiction. Everyone was excited, but Kathy and Johnny still left the bible-study in separate cars. Johnny got home about an hour after Kathy with an excuse and immediately went into the restroom. Kathy, knowing that her husband was going in there to fix heroin began to pray once again for her husband. After what seemed to be about an hour, Kathy became concerned when she discovered that Johnny had never left the restroom. She went cautiously to the door calling out to him. Fear gripped her when there was no response she immediately burst through the door finding her husband slumped over the toilet overdosed, his head swollen, his face blue and his lips were an eerie white. Frantically she grabbed him and even though eight months pregnant, she dragged him into their living room where she began to pound on his chest and then tried a form of CPR – all to no avail. He was not breathing! In desperation she phoned the Pastor from the church she attended, Mitchell Peterson. After hanging up panic-struck, she ran out of the house screaming. Coming to her senses she once again hit her knees on the front porch of the house afraid to go inside and began to lay hands on him and Pray. The paramedics, Pastor Mitchell Peterson, and the sheriffs Department showed up and Johnny was SAVED that day in more ways than one. Today, Johnny and Kathy have five children, two grandchildren, and are now Pastors of Victory Outreach Church of Seattle in Washington. Pastor Johnny and Kathy came to Seattle 15 years ago and opened up their home to men and women to start a Church, which is now thriving where miracles take place. People from all walks of life now come to worship and give God praise. Look what the Lord has done! ~Kathy Heredia (First Lady of Victory Outreach Seattle, and Pastor’s wife)


Write a comment: