My wife and I were married when I was twenty-one and she was only sixteen. Within the first year of marriage we found we were a couple with many problems. I started working a week after our wedding day, and soon began consuming alcoholic drinks with my co-workers. Before long I was drinking and smoking heavily.

We had three children in six years, and when my last child was nine months old I migrated to the United States. A few months later my wife and children joined me in New York City. The suffering continued for my family because I became an alcoholic, drinking heavily every day. My wife and children lacked everything—food, clothes, shoes, and the most important thing, love.

One day when my wife and I were having a fierce argument and the children were crying, we had at that moment a visitor. A neighbor knocked at our door and came in to see us. During our conversation, this man asked us if we attended some church and inquired as to our belief about God. I replied that I did not believe in God because if God existed, I would be healed of alcoholism and we would not be living a life of bitterness and lack. How drunk I was!

This visitor was a Christian Scientist, and he invited us to attend a Thanksgiving Day service at his church. To please my wife I went to that service. When I was introduced to the Second Reader, she told me "You are welcome. Here you will find truth." At that beautiful service I heard many testimonies to the effect that God was good and supplied the needs of all His children.

After that Thanksgiving service my family and I began to attend services every Sunday. I began to study the Bible, and I read from Second Corinthians, "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (5:17).

Also, I read from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, "If a man is an inebriate, a slave to tobacco, or the special servant of any one of the myriad forms of sin, meet and destroy these errors with the truth of being,—by exhibiting to the wrong-doer the suffering which his submission to such habits brings, and by convincing him that there is no real pleasure in false appetites" (p. 404).

That New Year's Day, just weeks after our first Thanksgiving Day service, I started my new life as a Christian Scientist. I stopped smoking and drinking and, more important, I became a new man, learning about God and demonstrating harmony.

For over twenty years now my life and the lives of all my family members have been blessed. Our understanding of the laws of God has resulted in numerous healings, prosperity, and joy. My three children loved the Sunday School, and now we have grandchildren in the Sunday School, as well. We are so grateful.

Rafael Huezo
Woodside, New York

I am the wife who lived with my husband when he was an alcoholic for approximately twelve years. At the end of that time we had reached a separation point. I suffered from headaches, was nervous, and became sad when weekends approached. Those weekend days were not happy ones for me or for our children.

The salvation for my family came when a friend invited us to a Christian Science service. I well remember that first service. The first hymn we sang said, "O dreamer, leave thy dreams for joyful waking, / O captive, rise and sing, for thou art free" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 412). At that moment I felt that we had been living a dream and that we were being awakened. After the service the Readers spoke to us, and soon I began to read Science and Health. I felt that there must be something in that book that could help us. I was hungry for knowledge. When I was halfway through the book, I was cured of the headaches. My husband was healed of smoking and drinking. We now had harmony in our household. The children liked the Sunday School, and we all felt we were reborn. My husband became a totally new man, and we continued to guide our children with the understanding of Christian Science. The children are now grown up, and each is guided by God, good. This was approximately twenty years ago, and we look forward to weekends!

Thanks to God and to Mrs. Eddy for giving us Christian Science. I am very grateful.

Margarita Huezo