Share Your Story

Tell us your faith story - where you've been, where you are and where you would like to be in your new relationship with Christ. We will post them here for others to read. Click Here to send - we'll post.

My name is Deb Williams Cadovius. For those that don't know me, I am a non-resident member of hyde park. I attended Hyde Park until my college years (GO WOLFPACK). It was in college that I met my husband, Adam, who is in the Navy. We are currently living in Portsmouth, VA. We have two youngboys, Erick and Ethan,
who are 3 and 2 years old. Adam and I have been married for 4 years and have literally witnessed God's power concerning our finances.

At the beginning, we had no car payments, rented an apartment and

only had our student loans/credit cards to pay off which totaled about

$26,000. That's not that much these days. We used our wedding

money to pay off all credit cards so that left us with only student
loans totaling $23,000. Then, my car was a mess so we decided to what?
GO IN DEBT some more and buy a new car that was about $16,000. Then, the

story goes. Children came along and suddenly our money was going as

fast as Adam could bring it home. We decided we needed a change. How
could we have forgotten our values and abandoned the principles of
scriptures?

It took about a year of coaxing, but Adam finally got me to

read "Financial Peace" by Dave Ramsey. What a beacon of hope that book
was?! We

immediately saved up $1000 for an emergency account, and dumped ALL of
our money into debt. To date, we only have about $8,000 left. Our

2005 Honda Odyssey is completely paid for and Adam no longer has his student

loan. We only have to pay the rest of mine and we'll be DEBT FREE!!!!
We dump about $1500 every month on that sucker, so by Christmas, NO DEBT
anymore! We use the cash system with envelopes. Every week, I head to
the bank, draw out what our budget says we need each week and put it is
very specific envelopes. If we don't use that cash at the end of the

month, it goes to my student loan. NO QUESTIONS asked. :-) Oh,

and get this! We each get "blow money" each week. I've never had that
before, so it really makes me feel appreciated and makes me feel that my

job doesn't go unnoticed. We even have money (cash) already saved for

holidays
and Christmas this year! That's a first!

I love having Adam guide our family in finances. He is the
president and he calls me his accountant (since he's never home, I'm in
charge of keeping up with bills/cash). He makes the ultimate decisions,
but he trusts me to handle it all, especially when he's out to sea.

Once you begin to understand that God has ENTRUSTED this money to you
for His use, you start to see where the changes need to take place.
With discipline, prayer and yes, saying "NO" to ourselves, we really can live a
wonderful, peaceful, financial life! Our financial life is STUPENDOUS!!!! GO GOD!

My name is Josh Currier and I am a member here at hyde park. I am 24 years old. This is my testimony about physical life...

I was the youngest of 4 children raised by a single mom. Although I was the youngest of the crowd, I was also the biggest – you see, I was always a very emotional child and I found at a young age that food comforted me. If I got upset I would eat. At a young age my weight became an issue.

I became a follower of Jesus in October of 1994 when I was 12 years old.

By the age of 22 I weighed 401 pounds (at one time I actually tipped the scales at 420 pounds!!!). My sister, Allison, and I worked together. Allison and her brother in law, Travis, decided that they were going to go on a diet, the South Beach diet, and they tried to get me to do it with them but there was one problem - I DIDN'T WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT! I was fine with my weight - I believed that my weight was a part of "me", it was a representation of "who I was" and I didn’t wanna lose “that person”.

Then one hot summer day, I had a spell at work - I was having a hard time breathing and was feeling really bad. Everyone around thought that I was actually having a heart attack! I actually turned out to be fine, just some heat exhaustion, but it really got my attention. I began to think, "maybe I do need to try to lose some weight".

In September ’05 I saw a tv show called "the biggest loser". In it, there was a guy who weighed over 400 (my size at the time). He was close to 40 years old and I began to think, "I don't wanna be like that when I get his age." During the season of the show he actually lost down to 185 pounds and I thought, “if he can be almost 40 and lose that much weight I KNOW that I can - i'm only 22 years old! I knew now that I definitely could”.

I knew to lose the weight I was going to have to change my eating habits. I began doing the "South Beach diet" eating lot’s of veggies, no breads, and began starting fruit after 3 weeks. I also quit eating so much fast food and eating out in general. I also changed my exercise routines. For example – I walked to work the whole month of September and half of October. After that I began attending the gym for about an 18 months period.

In this transformation of my body I needed God SO MUCH! There were so many times when I started that I wanted to quit. It was the power of God that would give me strength - He helped me keep it up. I began running and eventually worked up to running a 10 minute miles for up to 1.5 miles (which was great for a man my size).

I want to honor God with my body and today, though I've got a ways to go, I weigh-in at 275 pounds - (126 pounds lighter than my starting weight!). The reason that I want to share my testimony is because I want to give people hope - although I don't have a problem with surgery - you CAN do this without surgery. I would never say it was (or is) easy, but I believe that it can be done.

I hope that my story encourages you - and If you would like to talk to me about it, email me at: dirtychops82@yahoo.com

"Bear" Collins who was diagnosed 1 year ago with stage 4 Melanoma. In this interview (used recently in a hyde park service) he shares what he has learned since realizing the preciousness and fragility of life. Watch his story here.