Inside Story: Part 1: A Girl’s Religion

Inside Story for Friday 2nd of May 2025

By Andrew McChesney

When she was 12, Diana began drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, and listening to hard rock music. Amid the partying, her thoughts turned to God.

God hadn’t been much of a part of Diana’s early childhood. Her father spent a lot of time overseas as a sailor in the Navy, and the family, like many military families, moved every two or three years. A few times, her mother took her and her sisters to church on Sundays when they were very young and lived in Florida.

Image © Pacific Press

Diana had the chance to attend Vacation Bible School, at the age of 10, while living in Norfolk, Virginia. A bus came around her neighborhood from the Baptist church and picked her and her older sister up. She memorized John 3:16 and the books of the Bible. She learned about missionaries and respecting the unchangeable Word of God. She chose to be baptized. The church gave her a spiritual foundation. Outside of church was a different story. Diana was being molested, and the trauma would impact her for years.

Then the family moved again when she was 12, this time to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Many of the neighborhood children used alcohol and drugs, and Diana joined them.

At 14, Diana moved with her family to Monte Vista, Colorado. While smoking marijuana with her new friends, she sometimes spoke about God. When she was 16, many of her friends were required to take religious classes. Wanting a deeper relationship with her friends, Diana attended the classes with them. During one class, the priest declared that the authority of their church was above the authority of the Word of God because the church had changed God’s day of worship from the biblical seventh day, Saturday, to the first day, Sunday.

Diana was shocked and concerned. She remembered learning that God’s Word could not be changed. She wondered, “Why do people worship on the first day when the Bible clearly says to worship on the seventh day?” Diana decided to finish the religious classes but not to attend the church. She kept on drinking, using drugs, and listening to hard rock music. Over time, they became her identity, her life, her religion.

This mission story offers an inside look at how God miraculously worked in the life of Diana Fish, development director of the US-based Holbrook Seventh-day Adventist Indian School, which received the Thirteenth Sabbath Offering in 2021. Thank you for supporting the spread of the gospel with this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering on June 28. Read more about Diana next week.