Michelle Mondietz

An ex-junkie shares how she found love in prison

Australia’s prisons are filled with all sorts of people that have committed crimes. Sometimes they are very bitter or angry and they blame a difficult background, drug or alcohol addiction for their problems. Then there are those like Michelle Mondientz, who could blame both, but choose a different way instead.

“My life was extremely bad,” Michelle says. “I received very little education and became a drug addict and an alcoholic. I went through two bad marriages involving domestic violence and I hated people in general. I had given up on life.”

Then, one day, Michelle was arrested and imprisoned in the ‘watch-house’.

“I had some knowledge of God before this time,” she says. “I blamed Him for everything that was wrong in my life and I hated Him! While I was in the watch-house, though, I became scared that I was going to die and afterwards face His judgement and be punished forever.

“So, I prayed ‘God, please save me’ and instantly I felt this indescribable peace.”

Over the next two years, God revealed to Michelle, slowly, that He loved her and would always be there for her. As she worked through her issues of abuse, fear and neglect she knew that she was not alone.

“I started to get a proper education and achieved my Year 10 Certificate,” she says. “God was also teaching me that He did not hate me or want to point the finger at me. In fact, the opposite is true, when you surrender your life to Jesus Christ, God the Son, and trust Him as Saviour and Lord; you receive God’s love forever.

“He makes you into a new creation for ‘old things have passed away for the new has come,’ as the Bible says in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 172 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.”

Michelle has a favourite Bible passage that God gave to her which comes from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament, chapter 61 verses 1-3chapter 61 verses 1-3; ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they may be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

“If you are reading my testimony, you are not reading it by chance,” Michelle insists. “Jesus loves you and He wants to bring you into His eternal kingdom. God took this burned out ‘junkie’ and turned me into a happy woman with a great family and living an excellent life that cannot be compared with my old life.

“I might be in an Australian prison at the moment, but God’s love is not in chains!”