"I was brought up in a Christian family, and most of the way through my childhood, my entire family went to the local church. Needless to say, from an early age I knew all about Jesus from what I heard in Sunday school, and yes, I considered myself a Christian.

When I was about 17 I started drifting away from my church. There were a mixture of reasons for this - hardly anyone my age, uninspiring services and so on. So I stopped going, but I didn't like to admit it. I went occasionally. My brother and father had stopped going long before that.

I'm 21 now. Last April (the week after Easter), I was trying to get a job and applied for one that happened to be on a Sunday morning. One of my friends asked me to come to her church on the evening so I wouldn't miss out. This church was very different - the services weren't monotonous, the pastor was a very good speaker, they had a live band; and most of all, they had a healthy group of people my age, not to mention two of my best friends, and some of my old teachers.

It turned out that my "church-change" came at exactly the right time, for around then there was a lot of turmoil in my house, some fierce arguments, and at one point I called the police. The policeman who came suggested I go to a friend's house for that night, and so I did, and for the first time I ran away from home.

That night I ended up staying in another city, in the student flat of my two friends who had introduced me to their church. Obviously I can't share the details of why I ended up there, but it was an awful night -- I felt so lost, alone, and unloved. There is no feeling worse than that, I can assure you.

The morning dawned clear and sunny, but I didn't want to go anywhere. I wanted to stay there, and never go home again; I was scared. But one of my friends persuaded me to go for a walk with her, and while she went to the uni to drop off an assignment, I went into the cathedral nearby to think, and to pray, even though I really believed that nothing could be done to make my situation better.

Later on, we went for a walk into the city centre and I talked to my friend about how I was feeling. And then, she asked me if she could pray for me.

It's pretty hard to describe what happened next, but while I was sitting there with my friend praying, I suddenly felt this wave of emotion going over me, and it was very difficult not to cry. I felt like someone was saying to me, "You don't have to deal with this on your own. Let me help you. You're not alone." And I realized it was God talking to me, and suddenly I knew that He loved me and that was the most amazing thing I've ever felt. It changed me. And that's when I decided to become a Christian, a real one.

I won't lie and say the next few months after that were easy. My life still isn't easy. But at all the worst points, I can honestly say that I felt God's hand shielding me and keeping me on my feet, and it made the world of difference. And since then, too many things have happened to be coincidence, when I've had the opportunity to do good things, or when I've really needed a break and somehow, inexplicably, something happened to make it all better. And the most unbelievable thing of all is that all I had to do was pray about it and put it in God's hands. Looking back now, if I hadn't started going to my new church, if I hadn't spent that night at my friends' flat, if I hadn't met God that day... I'm not sure where I would be right now.

I hope that if anyone reading this is in my position or something similar, worrying if God is there, feeling alone, having other problems - don't worry, please. Even if it seems impossible for it to get any better. I know that God can do anything and has done for me, He can for you. Just pray about it. Put it in the best pair of hands, and you'll come out the other side again, like I did."

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