The Woodward, Oklahoma mother of three girls began a path of self-destruction at the age of 12, when she attempted suicide and spent nearly two years in mental institutions.

The open door began with a Gideon bible and a visit from Sharon Jackson, the wife of a Gideon and a member of the auxiliary group for women. But before that day in 1998, Pack lived a life of drugs, danger, hopelessness and misery. "All of my life," says Pack, "I felt abandoned, rejected and unloved. I was put into a foster home and adopted when I was three, but I never bonded with my adoptive parents. And I couldn't trust or accept love."

Pack was 15 when she returned home, still very rebellious, angry and with no self-worth. Her adoptive mother blamed her for the stress she had caused the family and told her to leave and not to come back. She says, "I remember the door slamming and I was miserable. I thought there was something very wrong with me."

As a 16-year-old, she moved in with a 21-year-old man who robbed to support his drug habit and his alcoholic mother. Barbara hated it and again called her adoptive mother with a plea to return home. The answer was no.

Nearly one and a half years later, her boyfriend was arrested and sent to jail. With nowhere to go, she checked into a drug rehabilitation center for adults. She stayed a while and then moved on.

She was 18 when she checked into the Griffin Memorial Hospital in Norman, sick and in danger of dying from the ravages of drugs. But the drug use continued despite marriage and the birth of a child. Eventually she was jailed on seven felony charges.

Barbara had reached a dead end and faced 60 years behind bars if convicted on all counts. She thought suicide seemed like the only way out. She says, "That's when I started reading a little Bible that had been placed in my cell. Around that same time, two women came to my cell to visit. We called them church ladies, and they knelt down by my cell and prayed."

Before moving on to the next cell, Sharon Jackson assured the young prisoner she could ask Jesus to come into her heart right there in her cell and experience a joy and peace promised to those who trun to Him (Jesus). Alone in her cell, Pack turned her life over to Jesus Christ.

She was sentenced to 10 years probation and ordered to complete a drug and alcohol program. Barbara shares, "I had never completed anything, but despite my present fears and past failures, I went to a treatment center. Once a week, two pastors came to visit and taught the Word of God. I was given my first Bible, and I asked the Lord for three things."

She asked the Lord to deliver her from addiction to lead her to the truth of her adoption, and to give her a family where there was love and a willingness to serve the Lord together. In time, each prayer was answered. And as her old life faded away, the focus was no longer on herself.

Sharon Jackson didn't know of the effect her prison visit had made until one day as she was going through a buffet line at her church, and a pretty young woman spoke to her. Jackson didn't recognize Pack as the prisoner she had visited during ther Gideon women's auxiliary ministry. Pack told Jackson that she was the one that had led her to Christ. Sharon says, "She is a gift from God to encourage us to go back and visit the jails every week."

As a member of the First Baptist Church in Woodward, Oklahoma, Pack teaches a single women's Bible class. She works with the Baptist General Convention in Oklahoma to speak at seminars, and she still delivers messages of hope to femal prisoners. Barbara Pack says, "Some of the women do accept Christ, and that is the beginning of everything. He has redeemed my life, and nothing has been the same since."