- All my life I have searched for approval from other people. I measured myself from what I could do, and how well I looked. I thought that I had to earn love, like being especially good looking, or especially clever, or being good and doing what was expected and said. Therefore it was very overwhelming for me to come to Bakkebjerg, where I experienced true love. Here I experienced, for the first time, people who loved me limitless, exactly as I was!
Helle lives at Bakkebjerg, which is Evangelist rehabilitation centre which helps women in need. The house is situated in Northsealand in the countryside. At the terrace there is served coffee and fresh made waffles, made by the children of the house, while the adults are beginning to prepare dinner for 20-25 people. Helle has just come home from work, which is at a factory nearby, and the conversation is already lively.
- If I had not come to Bakkebjerg, then I do not know where I would have ended up. I was definitely far out. Confused and rootless constantly searching for new experiences. I had been doing drugs and felt I was drawn to continue in this environment. I wanted to cut myself and thought of suicide. My closest family did not know what I went through, because I did not want to disappoint them. Actually I had no one whom I talked to about these things, Helle tells seriously.

Divorce, school and boyfriend
Helle comes from Hilleroed, where she lived the first years of her life with her father and mother and two older siblings. The parents got divorced when she was five, and she moved with her father to the southern Jutland, where there were cheap houses and jobs to get. The year after they moved back again, this made it possible for Helle to see her mother more often.
- Both mum and dad are teachers, so I have been raised very pedagogical. My father and I had a good time together, and in school everything was fine, even though I was a bit of a "dreamer". I was a real horse girl, who loved to go horse riding in the wood and play princess. When I became a teenager I got more restless and I was often sent out of class, but in the end I ended up by pulling myself together and finishing up the 9th grade with a ok grade, Helle remembers.
- I the 10th grade I changed school and I became freakier, I looked like one who smoked hash. I also got a boyfriend. I was 16 and drove a Puch Maxi. He was 18 and drove Opel Kadett. He was working to learn how to be a plumber, he talked like a blacksmith and came from a home were they drunk a lot of beer. Helle continues:
- Later I moved in with my in-laws. My dad moved to Aarhus, and I choose to stay with my boyfriend. We lived in an apartment in my mother-in-laws basement, but it was not without complications. It ended up with that we found a youth-apartment where we could live together as man and wife. I started to work to become a confectionary and I managed all the practical things, and my boyfriend did nothing, except going to work, drinking beer and lying on the couch sleeping when he came home from work.

At Alpha-course
One day her older brother stopped by and told her he had become a Christian during his preparation for communion.
- I am not raised especially Christian, except I was attending FDF scouts camp as child, Helle says.
- My brother invited me to an Alpha course in the state church in Hilleroed. It is a kind of Christianity course, and I thought it sounded exciting. I went to the meetings and I said yes to Jesus there. I was totally happy every time I had been to an Alpha course. My boyfriend was sure I had a boyfriend in church. He did not know what had happened, and he could not understand how come I suddenly had becomes so happy. The priest told me to go home to my boyfriend and ask for forgiveness because I had been unfaithful to him, and I did so. Today I wonder why he did not told me, that it was wrong living together without being married! Helle tells how she was deeply moved when her older brother was married in the summer 2001:
- It was so beautiful; I was fascinated by their relationship. Imagine that they lived pure without sleeping with each other, before they were married. I also wanted to be married and experience the same kind of happiness, Helle says thoughtfully.
Few months later Helle got married, but not under so happy circumstances. She was pregnant and expecting a child, but the week before the wedding she began to bleed and she had a miscarriage. She was devastated, but never dreamt of cancelling the wedding.
- I thought, I could save my husband when we got married, and I whished of all of my heart that he should become a Christian. I still dreamt of the "perfect family". But after the miscarriage I did not whish to get pregnant again. It was not perfect anymore, so instead of holding on to the faith, I forum other interests.

Rootlessness
Helle got interested western riding and she fell in love with a guy at the riding school, whom she started flirting with. Of course her husband got angry when he found out, but Helle continued. Among other things she made a dating profile on the internet, where she met different men to be confirmed. She began to go to fitness and got new friends, which also resulted in new affairs, so she would have a reason to divorce her husband. The marriage lasted a year and a half, and then Helle moved in with a new man, whom she lived with for 8 months, until she found a new, and so on, and so on...
- It was a terrible mess. I thought men were stupid, but had a naïve idea, that the next maybe was better, she says.
Helle lived her life with her girl-friends, going to parties wearing smart clothes. She enjoyed, no longer being in a relationship, but she had shifting boyfriends, when she felt like it.
- I got more and more rootless and confused, always on the move towards the next big adventure. New things had to happen all the time, she explains. Helle did not want to be confectionary, so she decided to become a farmer. She applied for application at Lyngby agricultural school, and when she found out that she could study abroad in Australia it was of course that way she chose. Here she lived with a Christian family, who by Australian standards had a small farm. Helle worked at the farm, and in her spare time she was looking for the big love. She was very much admired, and many guys were standing in line to give Helle the approval she was hungering for. She hoped to meet Mr. Right, and that he would take her on a big adventure in the wild Australian nature, but that was not the way it was going to be. Seven months later, when the stay was officially over, Helle had to go back to school and continue her study.

Party animal
Back at the agricultural school she found a new guy. He was 17 years old and she was 27, but she did not find that a problem.
- He was very extrovert and open, and I was the counselling type, who would like to help him. Later I found out, that the reason why he talked was that he had been doing drugs. There was a "Bandidos" sticker on his door, and I found out that he was dealing stolen things. I thought it was exciting to get a gangster-like-boyfriend.
Helle had a cross tattooed on her loin. She could not forget the faith in Jesus, even though she no longer lived her life with him. In the beginning she did not do drugs herself. First time she did so, it was to help her boyfriend, so she would better understand him. She after all wanted to help...
- I only did drugs when we were going to a party. We did amphetamine and cocaine. I thought it was exciting, but I had a feeling that the devil was sitting and laughing at me. "Now you are going to be a drug addict" he said. - At a time we did drugs for three days without eating or sleeping, and then it clicked in my head. I got so terrible afraid and I was just lying on a couch shaking. After that I was afraid of everything. As an example I did not dare to go by car and my self-esteem was almost non-existing. I had a piercing and started to smoke, just to feel better or stronger. I was sure I had become stupid because I had been doing drugs. If it had not been for one of my girl friends, I would not have been able to manage the exams, she says and adds on that she sadly never "totally finished".
Actually she dropped out of school just four months before time.

Suicidal thoughts
Confused as she was, Helle began studying for pedagogue, but found it difficult to fit in. The world of pedagogues was a "women world" opposite to the farming- and confectionary world, where men were dominating. To earn money for her study Helle found a job as a lifeguard and she was really good at this. She could go the deepest and the longest and was not afraid of dying. - On the contrary. Her point of view was that everything was without point. Life was not great. Helle used most of her time sitting in front of the TV killing time and felt extremely lonely. Soon suicide thoughts came knocking. She wanted to cut herself but was to proud to do it. She was afraid that someone would see it when she was working out. One day she met a friend who invited her to a prayer night in Hilleroed.
- I had all kind of excuses and had a difficult time deciding if I should go or stay at home in from of the TV, she remembers. In the end she decided to go, and at the prayer night she sat in the back of the room.
- I felt guilty. I had been far away from God for so long. I was also quite sceptical. At least I must have been looking like that, because afterwards some people thought that I was a journalist!
Helle was overwhelmed by the many impressions and ended up in the front for prayer and to surrender to God. When she came back to her seat she started crying, and in the break she lost it. Luckily a co-worker from Evangelist came and took care of her. She had a soda and some Evangelist newspapers and was told that she was very welcome to come again.

On the other side
Helle continues:
- After being prayed for I stopped smoking and having sex with different men. I chatted with some different friends who warned me of Evangelist, but they could not scare me. I could feel that what they lived was real. I really felt a battle inside. I felt like going to Christiania and buying drugs, but I did not do it. I felt I was standing between two groups of friends. Those who hated drugs, and those doing drugs. Luckily one of my friends from the pedagogue study advised me to seek help. "See you on the other side", he said.
Helle had read a story I the Evangelist newspaper about a girl from Greenland, who had gone underground to get help.
- I felt like doing the same, but did not know if I had enough problems, she remembers. Helle went to a meeting on the 17th of December 2006 in Goerloese in the village hall; here she met Vibeke and Martin Schmidt, the leaders of Bakkebjerg. She went home with them to hear about what they were doing, and at 8 o'clock the same evening she started prayer and fasting.
- My past was cleaned up and I was set free from suicide thoughts and the addiction to drugs. It happened quiet and peacefully. I did everything they told me to do, and I was happy that it was so well organized. When I came out after the 3 days of prayer and fasting and saw the list of people who had been praying for me, I was surprised. To believe that all of these people whom I did not know, had been there praying for me!
Helle had to break off the contact to her friends for the first three months and turn in her phone, which was really difficult. When the three months had passed her Christian older brother was the first one to visit her. The rest of the family have also come to visit, actually her dad spend Christmas at Bakkebjerg.
- In the beginning I lived a lot controlled by rules, but now I have experienced the power of God and I feel no need to go back to my old life. I have found out that it is possible to live like the Bible teaches, and now I understand what I read. God speaks to me, and I have experienced how he uses me to help others. Both practically and spiritually, she says. Regarding the future then she is leaving Bakkebjerg after the summer holiday to work as a volunteer in Uganda. Here her primary function will be to teach the missionary children, and she is looking very much forward to that. If she is going to end up in her parents footsteps and become a teacher - only time will tell. For now she "only" has the education confectionary, almost farmer and a little pedagogue!

 Evangelist magazine no.1, March 2008