Here’s an entertaining conversion story from 2011.
Sal Bentivegna, a New Yorker, thought the Christian faith was ridiculous. He loved taunting his devout Catholic mother Gloria and would often get combative and sarcastic. He told his mum that she ought to pray “to her God” and ask for ‘dinero’ to sort out her financial difficulties. Gloria refused to do this but she had been praying for her son’s conversion for several years. She told her son that he was more than welcome to pray on her behalf.
Sal took up the challenge and mockingly asked God to help his mother win the lottery. He prayed the following: “God I don’t know if you’re real or not, but if you are there, please let my mother win a million dollars”. He added: “If Jesus wants me to believe in him, that’s what he’ll do”.
The next day, Mrs Gloria Bentivegna bought a ‘lotto tree’ of unscratched instant win tickets from her church’s charity auction. Amazingly she won the New York Lottery Sweet Million game and every year for the next 20 years, Gloria is going to garner $50,000!
Sal was gobsmacked and mused, “I sat back and thought about it and realized the odds against this are astronomical. I can’t shrug off that Jesus had a hand in it. No pun intended, it was a Godsend”.
He then abandoned his secular beliefs and became a believer! He changed faith! Gloria later said that God had performed two miracles. The unexpected lottery win and the conversion of her son!
Mark is a lively storyteller and the author of four books, including The Spy, the Rat and the Bed of Nails: Creative Ways of Talking about Christian Faith. His work is focused on storytelling and how this can help us to communicate the Christian faith. He has written many articles for the Baptist Times, RE Today, Youthscape, Direction magazine and the Christian Teachers Journal.
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