Connecting Columbia Union Seventh-day Adventists

Alex Partyka prays at a Maryland Men of Faith Event. Photo by Marlon Ming

Jail an Answer to Prayer?

Story by V. Michelle Bernard and Edwin Garcia

Alex Partyka grew up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, but stopped attending during a span of 12–13 years of partying that included almost daily drug highs. Toward the end of this time, he realized he wanted to change his life, but didn’t know how and prayed about it.

He says this prayer resulted in a 30-day jail sentence when new evidence was introduced in a re-opened 15-year-old fireworks case thought to be closed.

During his first two weeks in jail, Partyka says he “couldn’t understand what was happening.” But one day he woke up and his mind started to clear [from the drugs]. “It was an answer to a prayer. I started praying and realized that the Lord knew 15 years earlier [how this situation could help].”

Partyka was thankful that his employer and family saw his 15-year-old crime as a teenage prank, and he went back to work after jail time—a huge blessing.

Being in jail and being forced to stop taking drugs was the extra catalyst Partyka, now a member at Chesapeake Conference’s Triadelphia church in Clarksville, Md., needed to continue down a different path.

Read how Partyka’s involvement in the Men’s Ministries program at church helped him fortify his newly renewed spiritual walk.

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