My name is Nicholas Wiegert. I am 35 years old, married, and father to 2 boys. My wife and I were married in August of 2023. My story is not a simple one, but I will try to make it short. 

I grew up in a Christian household. My grandfather was a Baptist preacher. I like to tell people I was rocked in a Baptist cradle. At the age of 6 I remember for the first time God telling me that I needed to be saved. When I was 12 years old I was placed in foster care. Not because my mom was a bad parent. She was just a single mother raising 4 kids with no financial help from our fathers. I was in foster care for 3 years without being able to see anyone in my family. The last foster home I was in I was mentally, verbally and most of all physically abused by my foster parents. I would get close-fist punched in the face, whipped with the metal end of a belt. I didn't get to eat dinner at the table with them. I had to wait to eat afterwards, and if there wasn't any left overs I had to fend for myself. I didn't get to have fun. I had to do chores around the house while their son got to go outside and play, or hang out in his room and play video games. I got so depressed I started cutting myself and quit believing in God. I told myself, If there is a God and he is real, why would he let me go through this. 

I never really delt with all the things I went through in my childhood. Not to mention all the things I experienced and seen before I went into foster care. I eventually got to go back home and live with my mom after the foster care system found out about what was going on. 

I eventually started going to church and got saved when I was 15 on March 14, 2004. However in 2005, God spoke to me and told me he wanted me to preach. I DID NOT want to do it. I ran the opposite direction. Thus began my life in addiction. I found myself constantly drinking. I would go to school with vodka in water bottles. I would drink every single day. Sometimes I would even skip school to go day drink with some of my friends. I started smoking marijuana which led to me selling it. My grandmother was a walking pharmacy so it was nothing for me to snatch pills from her. At first I started selling them, but then I started using them. I was constantly high or drunk about 95% of the time. In times when I didn't have money, I would go to the gas station and pretend to be out of gas to get people to give me money so I could buy alcohol. I would steal stuff from walmart and then return it without a receipt so I could get an instore gift card and I would give it to my friend to buy me alcohol since I was under 21. 

It wasn't until I was 18 that I got arrested for a pretty serious crime. I was looking at 5 years in prison. I got down on my knees and told God I would do anything he wanted if he helped me. I ended up going back to church, walked away with a slap on the wrist with nothing going on my record, gave my life back to Christ and owned up to my calling to preach on July 1st 2007. I'm not going to say that I haven't slipped up since then. There have been times I have fallen into depression and found myself starting down at an empty bottle, but I am at a point in my life where I truly have broken free from that need, or desire by the power of Christ. I never want to go back there. All I want is to tell others how Jesus set me free from the desire and how he can do the same for them. There is so much more freedom, joy, happiness, peace, and love in Jesus then you'll ever find in anything in this world.