International speaker and author John Pridmore will talk about how he turned his life around during a Jan. 25 visit to Marian Catholic High School in Rush Township.
The 1 p.m. public event is part of the school’s Regional Day of Prayer for Mercy and Healing for the Opioid Crisis.
Pridmore wrote the book “From Gangland to Promised Land,” a story about how he was a troubled youth who ended up in jail.
“At 19, I was in prison again and because the way I dealt with my pain was with anger, I was always fighting. They put me on 23-hour solitary confinement and I came out of there even more angry and bitter,” according to his website.
Eventually, he became a gang member.
“I had what I thought was everything. Money, power, girls, drugs, the lot. But yet there was something missing. This struck me more than ever, when I thought I had killed someone outside of a nightclub I was working at. After nearly taking that man’s life, something incredible happened and my life began to change,” Pridmore wrote.
He accepted Christ as his savior and began working with at-risk youths to show them alternatives to violence.
Pridmore shares his story with thousands of people around the world each year.
Prior to the Marian engagement, he will speak during a private event at the Carbon County Prison.