Women offer testimonials on how Meyer's preaching has helped them

St. Louis Post-Dispatch/November 17, 2003
By Bill Smith

Note: This article has been republished with the permission
of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Four years ago Sandy Dunn had a $125-a-day heroin habit, a room in the St. Louis County Jail and an "I don't give a damn" attitude about her health, her family and her future.

"I weighed 90 pounds," Dunn said, referring to the walking nightmare that was her life. "I never ate, I never slept, I never did anything except get high.

"I was torn up."

Dunn said she saw Joyce Meyer's "Life in the Word" program on the jailhouse televisions but didn't give it much thought until a group of volunteers from the ministry arrived to pass out pamphlets and books to the prisoners.

"Her ministers gave me 'Battlefield of the Mind,'" Dunn said, referring to Meyer's self-help guide on using faith to break through depression and anger. "It changed my life."

In August, Dunn, 36, sat in a folding chair 10 rows from the stage inside the Philips Arena in Atlanta, one of 8,000 people who had come to hear Meyer's series of "tell-it-like-it-is" sermons.

Once she left jail in 1999, Dunn said, she never used drugs again, thanks in large part to Meyer and her message. She works now as an emergency veterinary technician in the Atlanta area, and says she has a good home and a new relationship with her family. She is a member of a ministry similar in philosophy and outreach to Meyer's ministry - Creflo Dollar's World Changers Church International in nearby College Park, Ga. Her money, she says, goes to her church now instead of into her arm.

"I have everything," she said. "Life is good, very good."

Testimonials to Meyer and her ministry are everywhere in the pages of Meyer's corporate magazine, on her Web site, in the letters and phone calls that pour into her offices around the world, and inside the convention halls and the arenas where she speaks.

At Meyer's conference in Atlanta, every woman seemed to have a story:

Valerie Fannin, 50, of Durham, N.C., says she quit a smoking habit "cold turkey" through the encouragement she found in Meyer's ministry.

Kelley Slotty, 34, of Dallas, Ga., said that before she found Meyer and God, "I weighed 206 pounds, smoked and had a bad attitude." The cigarettes and the extra weight are gone, she says. She also credits Meyer, through God, with healing a painful broken tailbone. "God can heal you," said Slotty, who contributes $35 a month to Meyer's ministry.

Alice Lawrence, 51, of Douglasville, Ga., said Meyer's ministry helped heal her from chronic headaches.

Pam Ericson, 37, of Warner Robins, Ga., who said she attempted suicide 17 years ago after she lost her 3-year-old son in a fire at her home, said she owes everything to the guidance of Meyer and ministers like her.

Many women say that Meyer's autobiographical messages of child abuse, family estrangement and anguished search for love strike a familiar chord with what they have faced.

"It's like she is talking directly to me," said Rhonda Spidle, 43, of New York, who says she was sexually assaulted at age 14. She said she first noticed Meyer preaching on TV.

"I'd see this white lady who was dressed so sharp, her hair and her nails were done so nice, and she had so much authority," says Spidle, who is black. "Just looking at her, you wouldn't think she'd had a bad day in her life."

As Meyer spoke of forgiveness, Spidle talked directly back at the TV screen, she says.

"Oh, no, Joyce, I will not forgive that person."

But one day, Spidle said, she realized that if Meyer could forgive her own father for years of abuse, "I could forgive someone for one incident.

"Now," she said, "I love everybody, even the person who did this to me."

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