How a teenage daughter and her mum found Jesus together

Mia’s story

My name is Mia, and right now I’m 17 years old. In January 2024, my best friend Mason was murdered. He was stabbed to death. Mason was my other half, and we met when we were both ten. We had a plan to get matching tattoos when we were 18. We loved Toy Story and we used to call every night to say “To infinity and beyond”. We promised that whatever life threw at us, we’d do it together.  

When he died, I went into a deep depression. My whole life completely shut down. Three months went by where I didn’t talk to a single person. I felt like I was stuck in a trance. Shortly after this, I started getting bullied in school. I would get people following me around, harassing me, threatening me. They even made fake accounts to message me horrible things and sent a video of Mason being attacked. We went to the police because it got so bad, it took a heavy toll on my mental health. The police tried their best, but couldn’t really do anything. From the age of 15 to 16, I was in an abusive relationship, mentally and physically. After a year of that relationship, I ended it. I thought that things would get better, but it only got so much worse. The person who I loved most at the time joined in on the bullying, harassing me, stalking me, following me around school; it was really scary. 

Just after that, I found a lump in my breast. I went to the GP and they didn’t know what it was, so I had countless hospital appointments and scans, which led to surgery. I then got into another relationship where I was used and discarded. The guy had used me to get back at his ex, and then after he was done with me, he just threw me away, as though the relationship never happened. I felt so worthless after that. 

All these events happened in twelve months. I got physically sick and diagnosed with trauma-based PTSD. I saw no way out, so I planned to take my life. I wrote letters and filmed goodbye videos to my family and made my plan. That was until 20 February 2025. That was the day I planned to do it, but that morning I got the random urge to get on a bus. I went to my mum and I said: “I’m getting on a bus to go to the river”. And she was like: “OK”, because it was very out of the blue for me. So I got on the bus and took a walk by my local river and stopped in front of a waterfall. I suddenly felt I needed to read the Bible. I remember thinking: “If I’m going to take my life anyway, what harm will it do to read a verse before I go?” I called my mum and said I needed to get a Bible. We didn’t have one in the house, so she took me to buy my first ever Bible. I went home and read it. I struggle with reading, I can’t sit still for more than five minutes, but when I was reading the Bible, it was different. I started with the Gospel of Matthew and I felt peace and love for the first time in a long time. 

My world was switched upside down in a good way. I read for about four hours a day. I read all four of the Gospels in a week. I then told my mum what I was reading, and she went to the Christian bookshop and bought herself a Bible as well. 

We went to church together for the first time, and I felt like I had finally found a reason to live. On 1 June 2025, me and Mum both got baptised and officially gave our lives to Jesus. Since then, I’ve started a bleed kit campaign in honour of Mason, trying to prevent what happened to him from happening to others. This campaign is called ‘More Lives Healed’. A bleed kit is like a first-aid kit, and it stops people bleeding out. If one had been at the scene where Mason got attacked, he would have survived. 

Something I want people to take away from my testimony is that, no matter how hard things get and how south life can go, God is always there, and He will always pull you out of it. Just when I thought my story had to come to an end, it was actually just beginning.

Sam’s story

I’m 54 years old and last year I found God; He has changed my life. Ever since I was a very little girl, I had always felt alone, that I was not loved. I felt that I was a letdown to my family. At the age of 16, I was in an abusive relationship, which lasted ten years. I was isolated from family. I was pregnant at 18. I had two children, which were a blessing during that time, but life was so hard. I had no money. I used to just eat what the children had left because there was no money for food. The relationship culminated in me nearly dying when my then partner tried to drown me. But, as suddenly as the attack started, it stopped, and I was saved. I had no thoughts of why I was saved at that time, I just thought: “Why is my whole life so hard?” I still had a piece of my heart missing, so I tried to fill it with smoking and drinking. I had many different partners, just trying to fill the void, trying to end the numbness that I was feeling. 

I met a new partner when I started work at the age of 30, who was lovely, and we had three daughters. The time with my boys had been so difficult, and I was such a terrible parent, but I was just doing the best I could to survive at that time. The time with my three girls was different and they had a stable father. But there was still a piece of me that felt unlovable, depressed, sad, unreliable – that nobody could love me. This went on throughout my children growing up.  

When Mia was 15, she lost her best friend to knife crime. This impacted our whole family. We tried to support her, while trying to understand why children kill children. My daughter found her faith at this time. She began to come to me and tell me stories of what she was reading in the Bible. I’d never read the Bible. I’d never had religion. I thought people who went to church were all a bit weird. How could they be so happy all the time? It all seemed a bit strange to me. But when she came to me, I was fascinated. The stories were so interesting. I decided to buy a Bible, so we went to the Christian bookshop together. I found one that I really liked, and went home and began to read it. We started to go to church together, an amazing church called Riverside in Exeter. 

People there welcomed me for the first time. They actually seemed pleased to see me. I was amazed, and I loved it. I used to look forward to Sundays. Nobody else in my house is religious, so Mia and I would sit together in a bedroom or go out for a car drive and talk about the Bible and Jesus. And it was just like Jesus had always been in my life, always been in the background. He’d saved me, He’d given me food, even though we’d had no money. When my boys were little and I used to eat their leftovers, I realised there were still leftovers for me to eat. Jesus had always been there, waiting for me. I realised all I had to do was reach out my hand and He would take it. 

Jesus had always been there, waiting for me

I was baptised in June 2025, and my life was changed. I was baptised in the sea, which was a huge thing for me, because I was afraid of water, having nearly drowned. I’d never gone swimming with my children because I was so fearful. But it seemed to me that being baptised was closure for when I was nearly drowned, because I came out of that water and I felt I was a different person. I was transformed by God, and I feel loved. 

The piece of my heart that always had something missing has now been filled with God, who is there every day. He won’t let me down. He doesn’t leave me. He loves me for me, for the person I am. I have never experienced this love before. I always thought love was conditional, but when I found God, I realised that love is unconditional.

Even though my life hasn’t drastically changed, I’ve changed. My outlook on life is different. Before, I was always quite bitter. I thought: “Oh, why is my life like this? Why does nothing go right? Nobody loves me, nobody cares about me”. But now I know God loves me unconditionally. He knows everything I’ve done; He knows what I’ve been through; He knows my happy times, my sad times. 

When I have problems, I know if I focus on the problem, the problem becomes bigger. So I keep my eyes on God. It is awesome to know that there’s somebody in my life now always there, protecting me, and now I have a relationship with Him.

Mia and Samantha’s testimony was shared on their local Christian bookshop’s Instagram: instagram.com/p/DMcC3Rjs7VH/