February 9, 2000
Former heroin addict testifies
his life changed when someone cared
___By Ken Camp
___Texas Baptist Communications
___FORT WORTH--An unwashed, heroin-addicted ex-convict walked into First Baptist Church of Palacios one Sunday morning. A couple of hours later, he walked out the same doors as a new creation in Jesus.
___Jimmy LaQue told his faith story to Texas Baptists at their statewide Evangelism Conference in Fort Worth.
___LaQue described being abandoned at age 9 because his mother's live-in boyfriend didn't want kids around. After living with his heroin-addicted brother for some time, he left to fend for himself on the streets.
___"I learned how to steal to survive," he said. He also learned how to be a "mule," transporting heroin across the border for a drug dealer.
___LaQue spent time in a California maximum security prison and served two terms at the Walls Unit in Huntsville. For 30 years, he was enslaved by a $250-a-day heroin habit.
___One Saturday afternoon in July 1998, he was sitting in Palacios Bay when a young girl approached him, he said. "She told me Jesus loved me. She said he could change my life.
___"If she'd known who she was talking to, I don't think she would have come close to me," he confessed. "I was an ex-convict. I hadn't taken a bath for days. People didn't want to be close to me. They would walk the other way when they saw me."
___To get rid of her, he accepted her gift of a Bible, even though he only had a third-grade education and could barely read. And when she urged him to go to church--any church--he agreed.
___Walking the streets the next morning, LaQue came near First Baptist Church.
___"I said, 'That church is too big for me to go there.' But I saw the Christian Life Center. I thought that was a church," he recalled.
___He approach a woman who was unloading supplies at the center and asked her for food.
___"She gave me a burrito and a soda water, and she invited me to church," he said.
___After some thought, he decided to accept the invitation. When he entered the church's foyers, two ushers approached him.
___"They were coming toward me, and I said, 'Man, these guys are going to kick me out!' But to my surprise, they shook my hand and invited me in. They took me to a Sunday School class.
___"And you know, those people shook my hand. They didn't care how I smelled. They didn't care how I was dressed."
___After Sunday School, the class members invited LaQue to join them in the worship service.
___"I went in to hear the message. After the preaching, at the altar call, something pushed me into the aisle, all the way to the front," he recalled. LaQue told the pastor he wanted to become a Christian.
___"So we prayed there," he said. "I accepted Jesus into my heart. When I accepted Jesus, the craving for drugs was gone."
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