Greetings! I am Sister Alice Wendling, Pastor of the Full Gospel Church in Chickasha, Oklahoma and have been for the past thirty seven years.

I’d like to share a small portion of my life’s story with you. As a small girl I remember that I was always dealt with from God. My dad and mom took us to church from the time we were born. As I grew up, I can look back and see that God had his hand on me, for I couldn’t seem to ever participate in things like most other kids. I felt very convicted when I would start to do things that were against what I felt God wouldn’t like.

I was very quiet and backward and we were a very poor family. There were nine of us children and I was third to the oldest. When I was about twelve my mom and dad separated and I had to help take care of the smaller children. My dad had emotional problems and he was insanely jealous of my mom with no cause, for she was a very Godly woman. Satan worked in this way to tear up our home. I got saved and filled with the Holy Ghost when I was eleven years old. I was so excited; I wanted every one to have what I had.

So I lived as close to the Lord as I could and stayed in church until I was about fifteen. Then I went to work as a waitress and began to miss church and became distant from God. Although I never lost that conviction, always I would feel immediate conviction. When I was seventeen I met my husband and father of my children, Buddy Wendling. We started dating, he had a drinking problem but I didn’t realize what kind of repercussions would follow me from being unequally yoked.

So we got married in 1958 and from the start, we didn’t get along. My lifestyle was totally different from his. He was really wild. But, I loved him the more and kept staying together. We separated and reconciled numerous amounts of times. In all this we began to have our children. My first child was a girl, then a son, then two more girls. As our lives went on, I tried to be a part of his life and I neglected the Lord. But Christ never left me to myself; he was always dealing with me.

Then, when my first two children were four and two years old, we lived in Phoenix, Arizona, I was tired of trying to be a part of his lifestyle. I didn’t fit in. One day I knelt before the Lord in my bedroom and gave my life and surrendered my life to Christ in full. I made a covenant with Him, I told Him if he would forgive me and take me back, I would do my best to live for Him. I felt so wonderful I wanted to find a church. So I found a small church and they welcomed me and I began to do what little I could for the Lord. They let me teach the smaller children and play the piano and sing some. After approximately two years, my husband wanted to move back to Oklahoma. I didn’t want to because I loved the church I was in, but I finally gave in and moved back.

Here I found a church and started going, but my husband was steadily getting worse, drinking and staying gone and that hurt me a lot. Then when I started preaching the Devil really rose up in him and began to fight against me working for the Lord. He would get intoxicated and come in and get violent and many times I would have to take my sleeping children out of their warm beds and leave. This went on for quite a few years.

It didn’t seem right for me to be preaching and him to be living the way that he was. I prayed many nights about what I should do. Should I divorce him? But then I would think about being a divorced Pastor and that didn’t seem right either. So, I stayed with him and continued working for the Lord.

As if that wasn’t enough pressure, my son got addicted to drugs and alcohol. He was so bound behind addiction that he went to prison three different times for drinking and driving. It looked like he would surely destroy himself completely. Then my middle daughter, Kim who had acquired diabetes at the very early age of seven, got married and then for ten years would be addicted to drugs. I thought she would die, because she refused to eat or take her medicine. Then in the middle of that my baby daughter at the young age of 16 became addicted to meth.

So there was Buddy drinking and all three of my children bound by their addictions. Also my oldest daughter, though never on drugs, was bound by depression because her husband, a promiscuous alcoholic wouldn’t do right by her and they had three children. For moral support she would stay at our house for long periods of time for not wanting to be alone. So in essence my world had crashed around me, but I just couldn’t give up. All of my brothers and sisters and my father were all drug and alcohol addicts. And I was dealing with their problems as well.

My mother, who was my closest friend and confidant, passed away in 1973, so I learned to lean on the Lord because it seemed everyone around me that was close to me was going in a different direction.

So I learned well that scripture in (Romans 8:31) that says “If God be for me, who can be against me?” Through all these things I became grounded and unmovable in the Lord. Because of my perseverance, the Lord has delivered my husband and children, including their companions and my grandchildren. They stand by me as musicians, preachers and singers standing strong with me in the fight against the Devil. Side by side, we will work together until our Savior comes for us. To God be the glory for ever and ever.