Emphasis Preaching Journal

Country singer Jeff Bates tells in a Reader's Digest article how his adoptive mother's love rescued him from a self--destructive life of drugs. When he was three months old, his birth mother gave him away. He was taken in by Barbara and Ed Bates of Columbia, Mississippi, but felt unloved and unimportant when he later learned that he was adopted. Starting to play the guitar when he was eleven years old, he finally managed to get a song--writing deal when he reached his mid--thirties. One day, a friend offered him a hit of methamphetamine, and he immediately became an addict.