by Jacqueline Flottmann
(Reprinted from 3ABN World, March 2010.)
Hermya Smith walked into Jacksonville Mandarin Seventh-day Adventist Church and immediately began to cry. “They were deep sobs,” Hermya recalls, “so deep I was unable to talk. But when the words finally came out, all I could say was, ‘I’m lost! I’m lost!'”
This dramatic moment was the end of her old life, and the beginning of a new one—of a life touched by divine grace!
Resentments, and Questions
“I don’t know much about my father, except that he was a staff sergeant in the Army,” Hermya begins, “but my mother was an educator. When I was three my parents separated and my mother took me to live in Florida, where she cared for my grandfather. We were a black middle-class family, mostly made up of educators and pastors. My father insisted on christening me a Catholic at an early age, but I mainly attended the United Methodist Church while testing the waters in other denominations. I never really was into church, preferring to stay home watching television. Then a pastor’s remark one Sunday caused my mother to leave at the end of service and never return until the day of her funeral.”
Many years after her mother’s death, Hermya decided to come back to that church, and eventually became their secretary. But even while she attended church, she struggled with questions of doctrine. “I’d ask why we worshiped on Sunday, since the Bible always speaks of the Sabbath as Saturday,” she says, “but I never felt I got a proper answer to my questions.”
The Crack Trap
Hermya was about to take a turn down a very dark and difficult path. “I began smoking weed in my twenties because my husband tried it,” she says. “But when the police busted his supplier, he became frightened, and we quit. Later, in my mid-thirties, I began smoking it again, feeling that as long as I loved God and didn’t hurt anyone, it was okay to live my life as I wanted. My idea of righteousness was, It’s not what you do, it’s the way you do it.
“Then I met a new friend whose husband smoked crack cocaine and I tried it. I liked the smell, and it made me eat less. It had a high that was quick and powerful, but it also made me very sensitive to sounds. Rhythm was my thing, and crack caused the music to come alive! Before I knew it I was smoking more and more.
“When I moved to the other side of town it became hard to find, so I stopped for about five years. But then one of my girlfriends wanted to smoke some without her husband knowing, and we set out to find the drug on our own. This time I made my own contacts and continued using the drug until God impressed me that if I didn’t stop I would die. But because I thought I belonged to Him, I believed Satan couldn’t have me. Little did I know he already did! Even then, the Holy Spirit kept impressing me not to use, but my flesh always won out.”
Hermya eventually was arrested and spent the night in jail, but the judge dismissed the charges, and she managed to get off without a criminal record.
“I was careful to carry myself in a certain way, and I worked everyday,” she says. “You meet people like me all the time—in church, in business offices, as employees. Many drug addicts are people you’d never suspect. I was a ‘functional’ addict, and was generally able to pay for my habit. Of course most of my paycheck went towards my drugs, so I was always behind on bills. I constantly begged my family for money, which always left them angry with me. They’d ask what I was doing with my money, and I’d lie, of course. But most of the hell I lived through was with bill collectors who kept calling and calling. After a while it all began to get old.
“I realize my story is not typical,” Hermya admits. “Most crack addicts end up on the street, stealing, and selling their bodies for drugs. But I actually thought I was somebody, and that my family owed me something because they had a little money (which they had worked very hard to obtain). I rationalized they should give some to me, because I wanted it! (There is that ‘I’ again.)”
Not a Pretty Picture
Hermya’s life was not a pretty picture, in spite of her seemingly normal appearance. “I lived with my uncle after I was divorced,” she says, “and we lived in a nice home. But my personal living space was a dump! There were clothes and videotapes all over the bed and the carpet was crud because of all the perfume and air freshener I constantly sprayed to camouflage the odors of crack, weed, and cigarettes. No human being should have to live in the room I survived in daily. It was a pigsty—broken crack pipes hidden in drawers, empty crack and marijuana bags, cigarettes—the walls yellow from the smoke, and the furniture black and sticky from the aerosol spray mixed with perfume. My former friends told me they always knew what I was doing because they could smell the perfume and air freshener two blocks away!”
3ABN Cartoons?
However, Hermya’s 30-year addiction to crack cocaine, marijuana, and cigarettes was about to come to an end. One day, as she was channel surfing (and smoking crack), she stopped on Three Angels Broadcasting Network’s (3ABN) downlink television station in Jacksonville, channel 50. Although she thought she was watching a cartoon show, what she saw was the opening of Pastor Stephen Bohr’s program, Cracking the Genesis Code. Suddenly realizing the program was about the change of Sabbath worship to Sunday, she was amazed at how he was answering one of the questions she’d had for years. Soon she could be found in front of her TV every Tuesday night, eager to see what Pastor Bohr would say next. She watched more and more 3ABN programs, eventually to the exclusion of any other stations.
Then came the day we began airing the first-ever Ten Commandments Weekend from Washington, D.C., “and that’s when God began shouting at me! I kept thinking, He’s real! His Commandments are real! And the Sabbath is real!
“I wanted to read the book they were giving away to see for myself if what was written measured up to what I’d seen.”
Lost and Found
Several days later she looked in her phone book for an Adventist church, but found only one—the Jacksonville Mandarin Seventh-day Adventist Church. “I jumped in my car right away,” she says. Then I noticed two doves flying across the street while I was stopped at a light. I watched as they flew across and landed on top of the light pole, and the one in front began to peep at me over the street sign. ‘I’m going! I’m going!’ I told God!”
After finally finding the church, Hermya saw the secretary, Barbara Mills, and two deaconesses, Carolyn Relaford and Sue Smith, as she came in. The ladies were tidying up the fellowship hall after a funeral luncheon for one of the church members, but came over quickly when Hermya began to sob.
“She was crying so hard that we started crying with her!” Carolyn says. “She kept saying, ‘I’m lost! I’m so lost!’ and we thought she meant she was lost in the city and didn’t know where she was going.”
Hermya explains, “I was on the road to condemnation, even though I thought I knew God. Now I realized I was really lost!”
The ladies tried their best to console her. “We gave her tissues, hugged her, and talked at length,” Sue says. “Barbara gave her a gift bag of books, and then we invited her to our prayer meeting the following night.”
Hermya was back the following night—and on Sabbath, too! But most importantly, she asked God to remove her terrible addiction to crack. God impressed her instead that He would take away her desire for cigarettes and marijuana as well, and from that night on she was delivered from her addictions—without any withdrawals!
Winston Relaford, the church head elder at the time, began to mentor her by focusing on God’s grace. Meanwhile, Sue began Bible studies with her as well. “She was an eager learner but never took anything I saw as gospel. Instead, she checked every Bible test for herself,” Sue says.
Three months later, Hermya’s dream came true as she was baptized and joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
“It was a very emotional day for us all,” Winston remembers, “and I was overwhelmed with the privilege of helping to bring another child of God into His kingdom.”
Unconditional Love
Today Hermya is more active than ever in her church, serving as head deaconess and leading out in Wednesday night prayer meetings. “She’s like a ray of sunshine in our church, and being around her makes us all want to do more for our Lord,” Carolyn says.
But Hermya has helped her fellow church members in other ways, too. “She’s helped us understand the value of people,” Winston says. “She’s taught us to love everybody, regardless of their backgrounds. Piercings, tattoos, drug addicts—this is a place where they’re accepted and can grow in a safe environment. Jesus is being lived here. People come in and always come back because we love them.”
Pastor Juan Rodriguez agrees. “Our congregation is very multicultural,” he explains. “We have many different worship leaders and we afford them a lot of freedom, so each of them brings their own flavor to the worship service. Those who visit us for the first time find no one looking down on them for the way they dress, or whether they still smoke or not. We tell them to come as they are, and we trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in their hearts if they come our way. We really strive for transparency—to be real no matter what. It’s not unusual for us to have someone share a testimony about the difficulties they have had in their lives.”
Like so many others, this story has no end. “Immediately after Hermya’s baptism, two women approached her and asked about being baptized,” Sue says. “The pastor said he would like for both of us to study with them, which we did once a week. They were both baptized, too!”
“She’s the kind of person who is sold out to God,” Pastor Rodriguez adds. “She’s a woman of prayer, and she moves forward on her knees.”
If you’re in the area, why not stop in at the Jacksonville Mandarin Church? By all accounts, if you do, you’re life will be changed as you experience the warm embrace of fellowship from your brothers and sisters in Christ!
The Jacksonville Mandarin Seventh-day Adventist Church is located at 10911 Old St. Augustine Road, Jacksonville, Florida. Why not worship with them? And if you do, be sure to say hello to Hermya and her friends. They’ll be looking for you!