Zoe is responsible for a wide range of jobs across the Mission, from cleaning and decorating to supporting clients. Here is her testimony.

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I am the eldest of five children and grew up in a happy household with loving parents. I had very poor eyesight and started wearing glasses from the age of two, so when I started school things became difficult for me. Sitting at the back of the class I was unable to see the board and could not do my work. My teacher would keep me in at playtime and I remember looking out the window at the other children and feeling extremely left out and lonely.

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It was a daily battle for my poor mum to get me to school. My self-esteem was incredibly low and academically I fell very behind. At the age of thirteen I tried cannabis and fell into the wrong crowd, hanging out with a gang of lads, drinking and smoking and vulnerable to abuse. I have never felt so used and low and didn't think much of myself at all. I think all I wanted was to be accepted and loved.

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I met my husband, Matt when I was fifteen. He had just come out of rehab and that summer he was clean. I got to know the real Matt, the man I fell in love with. Unfortunately, around six months later he started taking heroin again, and a few months after that I started taking it with him.

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Our life became very difficult as we began sleeping in cars and abandoned houses, under newspaper to try and stay warm. We were doing crack, heroin and anything else we could get our hands on. I would wait for Matt to fall asleep, then take his gear and hide it until he had left for work, when I would smoke it alone. I knew I had a problem.

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Matt both wanted and needed to go to rehab, and ended up at Victory Outreach in Wales. He wasn’t allowed to have any contact with me at all. A month after he left I found out I was pregnant with our first child. The rehab allowed me to write and have a five-minute phone call with him once a week. This was so hard but I knew it was the best thing for us all. After five months I got to see him for one day, and Matt went down on one knee and proposed to me. Whilst Matt was in rehab he gave his life to the Lord. He would talk to me all the time about Jesus and I really didn’t understand. I thought he had been brainwashed!

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We were married on 23rd March 2002 and later that year on 8th June I gave birth to our first child, Poppy. I looked at her and couldn’t believe that something so beautiful and perfect could come from nothing. A few months later I gave my life to the Lord. All the glory goes to Him who pulled me out of the pit I was in and gave me a hope and a purpose.

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Matt and I have been married for twenty-three years. Being a mother came so naturally to me that we now have five beautiful daughters, a lovely son-in-law, who also has a faith in Jesus, and a gorgeous grandson Boaz, who was born in July this year. I now serve the Lord in multiple places, BCM and our church being two of many, in order to try my best to show God's love in everything I do, with the strength of my Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

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