Finding Hope

What happens when everything you believed unravels? Through honest questions, Scripture, and prayer, one family found their way back to truth and into a new spiritual home.

By Lilian Salinas

Read Time: 5 minutes

Jon and I first met through the Jehovah’s Witness community, a faith that had been part of both our lives since our youth. Jon was raised in a deeply committed family in which his dad was an Elder, and each family member was heavily involved in the door-to-door ministry. He was baptized at 14 and soon realized he was not ready for such a serious commitment. While many teachings resonated with him, he struggled profoundly with the role of Satan and questioned why the religion used its own Bible translation. By 16, he drifted away, his dedication to God fading. At 18, the church disfellowshipped him for wrongdoing. For the next three years, no relative or friend in the congregation was allowed any contact or association with him. When they finally reinstated him, the expected joy and relief never came. Instead, he was overcome by bitterness.

Around that time, I joined the same congregation after being reached through the door-to-door ministry and baptized at 19. We met through mutual friends, and as our relationship deepened toward marriage, we openly discussed the lingering resentment from Jon’s disfellowshipping experience, along with other doubts that our unhappiness had permitted us to explore. We married in 2012, and over the next couple of years, our family grew to include three young children.

We had stopped participating in the ministry years earlier and became what our organization termed “inactive.” Though disengaged from that faith, we faced a crucial decision about our children. We chose not to raise them as Jehovah’s Witnesses and instead took time to examine our doubts and beliefs more deeply.

Over the following seven years, this change gradually distanced us from family and friends. It was painful to watch people we loved begin to keep their distance. Eventually, we stopped all religious activities, both within the organization and at home.

Alone

In July 2021, many in our former religion viewed our connection to a family member who had recently joined the army as a violation of political neutrality. With tensions already building, this became the final straw for our extended family and friends, who cut ties with us completely.

We felt utterly alone and convinced we were doomed for spiritual death. We still believed that leaving what we’d been taught was God’s only true religion was an unforgivable sin. Exploring another faith would make us apostates, so we simply did nothing and tried to accept this as our fate.

Listening to the Word

But God had other plans. These plans began to take shape in the everyday routine of homeschooling our kids. In early 2023, I switched to a new curriculum that happened to be Christian-based. At first, I hesitated: did I even want religion back in our lives? I tried separating the religious and academic parts of the curriculum, but it was impossible because Scripture was woven into every area. That daily exposure gradually softened my heart. Within a few months, my children and I were reading the Bible together every day as part of the school program. By the end of the year, I was fully drawn back in by the beauty of God’s Word.

For the first time in seven years, I prayed with all my heart, asking God to forgive me for forgetting Him and to show me the truth. I filled every spare moment with prayer and Bible study, searching for meaning and slowly letting go of the idea that I could only please God as a Jehovah’s Witness.

A major turning point came when I set aside my Jehovah’s Witness Bible, the New World Translation, and began reading other Bible versions. I was shocked to see that many of the teachings I’d believed depended on specific wording in the NWT and appeared very different in other translations.

Jon remained more cautious. He was intrigued by what I was finding, but his upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness made him wary of the idea that truth existed outside the organization. While he wrestled with that, I started longing for a community, for my kids to attend Sunday School, for fellowship, and above all, for clear answers. I returned to God again in prayer, pleading to be shown the way back to Him.

Soon after, a family member invited us to their Baptist church, but Jon resisted, especially because they believed in the Trinity. “They don’t teach what we believe,” he said. I asked, “Well… what do we even believe anymore?” That question led us to sit down together and draft our own Statement of Faith:

1. No Trinity
2. Future and bodily resurrection
3. The resurrected will live on earth
4. No eternal conscious torment

We were surprised and a bit disheartened to realize that, after all we’d been through, we’d found conviction in only four areas. Curious, we plugged it into Grok (an AI tool) to see which religions might align, and it returned two: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians. Unwilling to revisit our past, we turned to the Christadelphians.

For months, we carefully researched, poring over the Statement of Faith on Christadelphia.org, listening to the Essential Bible Studies podcast on Spotify and requesting study materials by mail. Our fear of offending God by exploring “false religion” drove us to a thorough investigation and constant prayer for guidance. When we finally reached out, we learned there was an ecclesia only 45 minutes away.

On June 29, 2025, we pulled up to our first Sunday meeting, hearts racing with doubt. Sitting in the car, we whispered, “What are we doing here? Let’s leave!” But our contact waved us over with a warm smile. After the meeting, we got back in the car, and we all agreed, “That was great!” We returned each week and soon joined for Wednesday Bible studies. The Glendale Ecclesia embraced us from the beginning. They patiently reviewed first principles with us in Sunday School sessions and opened Q&A sessions on Wednesday nights, always directing us to Scripture. When Jon was hospitalized for five days, the community rallied together to support us.

For the next six months, we dug deep into the Bible, asked hard questions, and rearranged our lives to prioritize spiritual growth. We adopted the daily Bible Reading schedule, and our kids loved Sunday School. Our core beliefs stayed the same, but we came to understand so much more such as about Satan’s true nature, God’s manifestation in His Son, and God’s sovereign control. These truths filled us with joy and hope we’d never known before.

On December 7, 2025, Jon and I were baptized, in a beautiful ceremony, with our three kids watching as our new brothers and sisters prayed over us. Now we break bread and share the cup together, in appreciation for the immense sacrifice that rescues those who are lost, like we once were.

This story isn’t shared to shame our former friends and family, whom we still miss and love deeply. We also don’t want to portray ourselves as blameless or even criticize our former religion. It is simply our testimony of how God gently guided us through the pain, mistakes and loss to draw us ever closer to Him and His truth. As we grow, we move forward in confidence knowing that God truly hears the prayers of those who seek Him with open hearts and can transform even our deepest losses into something profoundly beautiful.

Lilian Salinas
with Jon Salinas,
Glendale Ecclesia, AZ