To the good life through crime, gambling and alcohol

Milan’s story

After my childhood, which contained abuse, staying in a children’s home, the imprisonment of my mom, and all the bad things that happened to me and which were painful, when I was 15 years old I got here to agricultural boarding school Kralovství in Šluknov, where I could on contrary spend three years of freedom, happiness, and my first love.

All of this foreshadowed upcoming things. Finishing school was followed by 25 years of me doing some really bad things. In that time, I also spent 12 years in prison for stealing, and 4 years in psychiatry.

There were also moments when I tried to commit suicide, when I ate about 80 pills, covered myself in a bag and I wanted to die.

But when the pills kicked in I had this essential desire to survive, that I wanted and needed to live. So I got out of the bag and I left a piece of paper in the restaurant across the street, which contained information about what I ate. After 2 days I woke up from a coma. In the coma I experienced a place of nothingness and darkness.

Until after some time when I started to believe in God, I found out that that place was without God, there was only darkness. I lived like that till 2010, when I had no idea what to do. At the instigation of someone I went to rehab, where I could start a new part of my life. Thanks to the rehab where I was treated mostly for gambling, I could make things right in my life. And after some time, thanks to one woman, I got to a church of Apoštolská církev in Ustí nad Labem. And after two weeks living in a pastor’s apartment I became a Christian.

 The first thing I realized at that time was that it gave me some kind of basis, that I knew from where and where I am going, not like before when I just did what I wanted. So this gave me peace and security and knowledge that God can lead me through my life.

And although I messed up a few more things with my debts, I could come here to Šluknov, where there is a rehab and discipleship centre where I could later also work and help guys who came here searching for God and a better life.

God is good and I am thankful that He found me. And one other thing, I once asked my pastor why hadn’t he found me sooner in my twenties, and he answered that I wouldn’t care back then. And he believed God can find us whether we are 20, 50, 10 or at birth, but He is here for us and that’s amazing.