Kelly Lester was abused and raped. Had three abortions. Worked in the abortion industry. Sold drugs. Ran drugs for the Puerto Rican mafia. Experimented with a lesbian lifestyle. Tried to kill herself. Then she found Jesus! And now she is married with six children, does mission outreach, and helps bring workers out of the abortion industry. Only God! Check it out.
The Dan Scott Show Podcast
Dan Scott Show, Radio Episode 78 - Kelly Lester (6-30-24)
The following program is a presentation of Grand Slam Ministries. Hi again everybody and welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Scott show. Episode 78 and as always we are presented by our 501c3 non-profit organization and ministry, Grand Slam Ministries. I am Dan. It is good to have you back with us for another week and right off the top of the show this morning I want to extend a heartfelt thank you on behalf of not only me but my entire family for your prayers over the course of the last couple of weeks. We as you may know lost my dad and he the single best man I've ever known and as two different people have told me since he passed away on June the 11th. If that man didn't get into heaven there's no hope for the rest of us. The life that he led 50 plus years of preaching the gospel, pastoring churches and just going about sharing Jesus and living the kind of life the Bible tells us to live to put others before yourself and you know I could just go on if I get on a roll here we're not going to get to the rest of today's show but it's been very very difficult and at the same time very heartwarming to see the outpouring of emotion, the outpouring of love and adoration that our family has received and I don't know how they do funerals in the part of the country or the part of the world where you live but in the apple latches where my folks lived in southern west Virginia eastern Kentucky and my mom still lives. They have as part of the routine about a four-hour visitation the night before the funeral the first hour just for the family and then three hours for the public to come in and then the funeral the next day. The night of the visitation there were conservatively 350 people who came through to see my dad and while on one hand that may not sound like a lot when you zero in on the area of the country where my parents lived and the small footprint of where he spent his entire life to have that many people and you know my mom went back through and counted up names on the registry and and she thinks it was more like 600 could have been but the bottom line is to see that many people come through and and pay their respects to a man who would have absolutely hated the attention it was it was something that we all needed and then on top of that the calls the the texts the the other messages the cards that we've received and the prayers and I know many of you were praying and I just want to say thank you again on behalf of not just me but my entire family. We've got a long road especially my mom who six weeks prior to that lost her sister her last living sibling so it's been kind of a double whammy but we have a large extended family and they are wrapping all of us are wrapping our arms around her and we know that God is going to provide her the strength that she needs so I just take a moment to say thank you and ask for your continued prayers for my mother especially and for our family. On this week's edition of the show we're going to start something that we did at about this time last year and that is a bit of a summer reruns series. I don't know if we'll do eight weeks like we did last summer but we will do a few weeks of some of the messages and some of the interviews that we've done that have impacted me and I'm hoping that they've impacted you as well and the first one that we're going to do this week is a lady by the name of Kelly Lester and if you remember that interview you know how powerful it was if you haven't heard it man you are in for a treat buckle up and hang on we'll set it up when we come back right after this. Here at Grand Slam Ministries our goal is to share the love of Jesus Christ through multiple platforms while at the same time executing our core missions of mentorship and helping children in need. The primary way we can effectively do all of those things is through the Dan Scott show our weekly Christian radio show that airs in multiple markets around the nation and the world. We are asking you to partner with us to not only sustain what we are currently doing but to grow both our on-air online presence and our ability to fund those core missions. Can you spare as little as twenty five dollars per month? How about ten dollars per month? If we can get two hundred partners to join us at each of those small sustainable levels we can begin to accomplish everything we believe God has called us to do so can you help us today with a donation of either twenty five dollars or ten dollars per month please go to www.grand slam ministries.org for your donation to get more information or to ask questions that's grand slam ministries.org and thank you for supporting the Dan Scott show and Grand Slam Ministries. Like what you hear have a question or comment maybe a guest suggestion drop us an email and let us know dan@danscotchow.org and now back to the Dan Scott show presented by grand slam ministries. All right here we go it is episode 78 of the Dan Scott show on all of our affiliates all over the place the life FM on Saturday mornings at seven a.m. KLNG and Omaha on Saturdays as well and so many others we have re-up with KLNG we have re-upped with the sports monster in the tri-cities area of Tennessee we are just excited to have all of you with us whether you are an over-the-air station whether you are an internet only station whether you are listening to us via the podcast archives we are just excited happy and feel blessed to have you as part of our audience and I want to say hello to a couple of people Bob who listens to us in Flint Michigan he and I traded voicemails this past week I hope that we'll get a chance to talk before this next week is out but thank you and then a gentleman who listens to us on KLNG and Omaha who sent me a note through the mail this week and he he sent a little pre-typed piece of paper with it that said you know no solicitations don't send us anything back you know who you are and I just wanted to thank you for reaching out and the kindness that you showed us so thank you very much out there KLNG in Omaha and that area as we get rolling just a reminder you can find everything we do at danscottshow.org all of the archives are there everything else is there Grand Slam Ministries is a page at that site so danscottshow.org and we want to hear from you whether it's through email dan@danscotshow.org or if you like to do like our friend in Omaha did you can drop us a letter the old snail mail as they say Grand Slam Ministries P.O. Box 35 Central South Carolina 29630 okay let's jump right into this Kelly Lester is perhaps the most intriguing person that I've ever interviewed if you take into consideration that at one juncture she ran drugs for the Puerto Rican mafia she was sexually assaulted multiple times starting at a very early age she worked in the abortion industry she dabbled in an alternative lifestyle if you know what I mean and then and that's kind of just the tip of the iceberg and then she found Jesus and what Christ has done in her life and what she's doing in church now and working to bring people out of the abortion industry it's one of the most remarkable things I've ever heard we originally aired this in January you're going to hear it either again or for the first time today my conversation with Kelly Lester and we opened up with Kelly telling us what she's doing right now sure well I live in Richmond Virginia with my husband and our six children I also am the director of outreach for my church which is MAPS Global we are a global missional family we have bases across the 1040 window and we train and send the missionaries there as well as serve our city of Richmond here and I also work for Abby Johnson and her ministry and then there were none which is a ministry to former abortion workers and do outreach and government engagement for her so I get to testify for pro-life legislation in different states as well as potentially this March I'm going to be testifying before the Supreme Court telling my story and hoping to set chains hearts and minds what is interesting about your story and so many of the the stories of the guests that we've had on this show over the past year is that you're not coming from a standpoint of religious piety you're not looking down your nose at somebody and pointing that finger and saying this is not what you're supposed to be you're coming to this from a standpoint you've been delivered from all of this stuff which I don't know if the kids still use the word street cred or not but but you have to have a lot of street cred when you go out and talk to organizations whether it's just women's organizations or really anybody when you step in front of Congress like you said you're going to it is coming from a I've been there done that and by the grace of God survived at standpoint right oh absolutely I mean I tell people all the time there is really nothing that you can say you've done or nothing that you could say has happened to you that I haven't done or that hasn't happened to me you know from homosexuality pornography eating disorders drug addiction domestic violence being molested by a family member I mean it's great you name it I have experienced it either again was either done to me or I chose and made decisions I'm doing it to myself and so I am definitely a testimony that God can heal anybody because if he can heal save and redeem me he can heal save and redeem anybody you and I have quite a few things in common as I got to learning a bit about your story where both preachers kids in fact my dad is still pastoring at age 75 almost 76 now and we both were sexually abused me by a group of older boys when when I was younger I also had a pornography addiction and I want to camp out there for just a moment because when we talk about pornography addiction 99.9 percent of the time it's something that's directed at men and we see stats about it even in the church that it used to be the stat was maybe one in three men still had some kind of pornography addiction I don't know exactly what it is now we don't hear that very often with women is it more widespread than we think oh it's absolutely more widespread than you think it's definitely very prevalent I think now with the access being what it is it's even more prevalent than people would know just like with men I mean that's no different than with men but I have found that the overwhelming majority of the women that I've spoken to who have a pornography addiction also have sexual trauma or abuse and I'm not going to say all but the overwhelming majority and so you can pretty much look that if a woman has suffered sexual trauma or abuse she has a pornography addiction and I think that's because she's trying to cover up her reality with a fake reality I know that's for me what it was was trying to find some way to deal with my you know my trauma and what I had suffered in a way to make it look better you know and it's and it and that led me to pornography and led me to you know the addiction of it and then on the other side of the coin when a man goes through it like I did and you are going into that world to whether it is hide pain whether it is to seek some kind of satisfaction you're not getting somewhere else you are suddenly finding yourself with you realize it or not you're objectifying women you are are getting a really warped sense of what love is so when you combine the two we really see what a devastating effect pornography is having on our society yeah and it's almost for the women it's almost like instead of being the victim I'm gonna I'm gonna do that so instead of being objectified I'm gonna take power by by getting into that kind of a thing so yeah it's an incredibly toxic and it makes sense that we're seeing relationships the way they are we're seeing the marriage rates what they are divorce rates what they are because culturally that has become normal and it's become not only normal but it's actually gone to a level of depravity that I can't even imagine I mean there there's been some documentaries out there on the different kinds of porn and it's as evil as normal porn is it has gone to a level of evil that is scary and normalizing rape normalizing incest normalizing pedophilia normalizing things that you know are the far far extreme which is what the enemy does right he takes something perverts it and then perverts it more and perverts it more and takes the far extreme and makes that to normal and that's what we're seeing unfortunately when when you talk about and we're going to get into your story in detail here in just a moment but when when you share your life and the things that you've been through and we know abortion is such a hot button topic we're gonna get into that and and and drugs and all those other things that you mentioned that there's a subject of women and pornography catch people off guard when you talk about that i honestly i think when i talk about pornography they assume which is actually a correct assumption that i was producing i was acting in pornography not necessarily watching it um i find that it's less of a shocker to people now than it was a couple of years ago because i think there are there are organizations out there raising awareness to it you know it is has become something that's not quite the taboo thing to speak of that it was in years prior for men and women especially christian men and women so i think because it has become something that has become more aware people are less shocked by it um so yeah i i haven't necessarily encountered that too much but i'm sure that it exists i am so glad to see that in the world of christianity in the christian church now it is starting to be developed i've had the opportunity to speak on two or three different occasions that celebrate recovery meetings and and and it's not just drugs and alcohol primarily probably drugs and alcohol but also whether it's a pornography addiction or whatever it is the church finally seems to be acknowledging that it is an issue and doing something about it yeah and there are lots of programs now for specifically for sexual addiction within the church whether that be pornography or whether that be a same sex attraction or whether that be you know whatever that looks like there have gotten to be some really great programs that are people are actually seeing freedom through and are actually seeing their lives change and actually seeing addiction broken living waters you know there's a few of them out there that are doing a really great job of identifying the real issues the root issues which we know you and i both know the pornography addiction is not the issue there's an underlying issue that leads to that and so we can try to stop the pornography all day long but that underlying issue is there nothing's going to change so it's like anything else that we're talking about in the in the world today it comes down to the heart and only one thing can change the heart and that's that's the relationship with christ we're visiting with with kelly lester on this week's edition of the dance got show all right so let's go back and let's let's talk about your childhood you were raised like i was in a christian home with with a father who was a pastor what was uh what was your childhood like well from the outside my childhood would have looked picture perfect you know we had two kids we lived in the upper middle class lived on a golf course went to church every time the doors were open i went to a good school was active in sports but i can remember from a very young age of three or four always feeling shame and not knowing why and doing inappropriate things with dolls and not knowing why and then move into elementary school i got teased and i got picked on and bullied and so i felt like i never belonged anywhere and then middle school that just increased and then high school i developed and became from being this nerdy quiet little girl to being i guess something people thought i was attractive or whatever and so started getting noticed by boys and and girls wanting to be my friend and i had some friends come over and spend the night and they said hey kelly let's sneak out and go to a party which i didn't know that was something people actually did you know i thought you just saw that on like after school specials but i said okay well we'll sneak out and go to this party and we did and at the party uh one of the popular boys came up to me and said hey kelly let's go for a walk and i couldn't believe you know that he was talking to me and so i went on the walk and while we were on the walk he raped me and i came back i got my friends i was in shock obviously went home the next day told them what had happened and they didn't believe me they said why would he have had to do that to you he could be with anybody and then a couple of days after that i went to my church and i told my youth pastor and she said well kelly if you've never snuck out and gone for that party that would have never happened and so while i felt you know i felt abused i felt taken advantage of i felt like it was my fault i felt like it was my fault and i didn't even i wasn't even worthy of it happening to me you know what i mean like my friends said why would he do that to you like i wasn't even good enough for that and so that just compiled this shame that i'd already felt as a child and through the bullying and things and so i looked for a way to feel loved i looked for a way to feel belonging and i found that with boys and became promiscuous and then by the time i was 15 i was pregnant and i had my first abortion it's just heartbreaking on so many levels but the but the one that jumps out to me is you're doing exactly what we hear people like you and and and so many different others telling primarily young girls and women today to do if something happens speak up if something happens speak up you spoke up you spoke you spoke up to your church and and they basically turned their back on you that to me that is heartbreaking yeah it is it definitely shaped many things for me going forward you know i i didn't i didn't want to disappoint my parents for my father i would rather not that my dad ever did this but i would rather my dad beat me to a pulp then tell me he was disappointed in me and so i didn't want to say anything to them that would make him disappointed in me you know and from for the church saying that it was my fault i knew that my dad would feel that way now i don't believe that now but at the time i thought that he would feel that way and and so that definitely shaped my belief of the church unfortunately the more detrimental thing was it shaped my belief of god i believe that god was disappointed in me i believe that god you know thought it was my fault i believe that god it was ashamed of me um and so that shaped every decision that i made going forward from there because of that view before we go forward we want to go back a little bit because you said when you were when you were really young you you found yourself doing inappropriate things with dolls and you didn't know why and you said right from the very very beginning when we started talking about this that there was molestation how old were you when that happened i don't know exactly it was before school age so it was three four years old um and i i only know for a fact because i after many therapy and inner healing and different things i i called my dad and said hey dad i think this happened and he told me that there was a time where we had stayed at this person's house when my mom was working and we'd say that their house and there were allegations of child abuse and so they pulled us out had no idea you know it had happened to me um but now i think you know and again this was many many years ago right even that kind of a topic wasn't my parents probably should have noticed there was a marked change in personality from me as a three-year-old to me as a four-year-old there was a marked change in certain things but they just didn't have the awareness um so while i have no memory of the situation there's a lot of confirmation that that happened in that way which lays the groundwork as i know for a lot of things that become issues moving forward that we've been talking to so so my question and i'm sure the question of a lot of people who are listening to this you talked about having your first abortion at age 15 how were you able to do that without anybody finding out your whether it was your parents or did they find out no they didn't so we went to my boyfriend's mother and told her and she said no problem i'll take you and we'll get the abortion and again this was over 20 years ago and so the topic of abortion was not what it is now it wasn't something that people talk up and talk spoke about i'd never heard the word abortion but i did understand that i was pregnant and i didn't want to be and that this was a way for that to happen and and this woman was a woman who was trusted in my life she was you know a team mom for my sports she was a leader in our PTA she was you know well known in the community and so when she gave me that advice i trusted her advice and thought this is the best thing to do and so i went in and they gave me a judicial bypass on my age i don't even think they checked my ID and gave them cash and had my first abortion and while there had been numerous traumatic things leading up to that point that day marked my my life and changed me and i i completely ran from everything good i you know that's when i started heavily drinking heavily using drugs um just everything went up on on a level because i thought i would never be forgiven for killing my child yeah and so yeah it's interesting that that would be the thing that would kind of push you over the edge but that just goes and speaks to the level of trauma that we hear all the time about young ladies who end up going through this yeah well before that i everything had been done to me you know i had been molested that wasn't my fault i had been raped that wasn't my fault although i believed it was on some level but this was something that i'd chose and you know it was a different level of it was a different level of depravity and trauma for sure i mean abortion is always come abortion always comes out of trauma and abortion is always traumatic and um you know and i i experienced that for sure visiting with kelly lester who is now a staunch anti-abortion advocate with six children of her own lives in richmond virginia she's our guest on this week's edition of the Dan Scott show so from that moment who was kelly lester for the next next number of years uh she was not someone you would want to know uh i was running drugs for the Puerto Rican mafia um was you know selling drugs very heavily in this area going up and down the east coast and again that was when the depravity just intensified so i was doing pornography i was involved in homosexual relationships i had eating disorders tried to kill myself um just was going down the wrong path had another abortion at 19 i had a chemical abortion which i had had the surgical abortion at 15 i thought that's terrible i don't want to do that again this will be quick and easy or that's what i was told and so i had a um abortion by pill which was not quick or easy um in fact it was very traumatic and i had to move from the apartment that i was living in because of the experience and then continued in on that lifestyle and lived that lifestyle was bartending and selling drugs and doing all of those things and then there was a point in my life where i wanted to help people and get out of that lifestyle i was seeing my friends die and so i looked for a job and saw that a women's clinic was hiring and went to the address and it was where i'd had my first two abortions and so i got hired as an abortion worker and actually worked in the abortion industry um and that was another crazy experience you know when in i went in because people will ask me Dan why would you you had a traumatic experience with surgical abortion you had a traumatic experience with the chemical abortion why would you work in the abortion industry i figured i had to be the only one who had that experience because there's no way if my experience was the norm that people would be having abortions there's no way that we wouldn't hear how horrible it was and so i assumed honestly i thought it was kind of it was kind of my punishment for living the way that i had lived you know that i had that experience and so i went to work in the abortion industry and realized very quickly that my experience was not isolated in fact it was more than norm than the exception and after about nine months working there i left because i couldn't deal with what i was seeing and what i was experiencing you know as as i'm listening to you talking and i don't say this flippantly at all please understand where i'm coming from when i say this but 35 or 40 minutes of a radio show really doesn't do this justice this needs to be about a six about a six-part documentary yeah yeah it's true but we'll do the the best we can to encapsulate all of this uh you just kind of breezed over two things that maybe we can touch on quickly and move on but how does a how does a girl from Richmond Virginia get involved with the Puerto Rican mafia and and then you you kind of breezed over the the homosexual relationship part of thing could you just address those two things quickly yeah well i am very convincing so i and i anything i do i do a thousand percent and so when i started selling drugs very quickly moved up and and as a 18 19 year old girl it was very attractive for them to have me run drugs because nobody would suspect that i was running drugs and so it happened with connection and relationship and that just you know was a kind of a quick and easy thing um the homosexuality was i was looking to fill holes you know i had been abused by men i had been raped by men and i was looking to not feel that and honestly was just looking for love anywhere i would i would take it from anywhere at any time any body um and so that that's you know that's where that that happened um which in the lifestyle that i was living was not super rare either i mean everybody was kind of everywhere all over the place you ended up with a total of four abortions is that correct correct and and the first two were at 15 and 19 how old were you and the other two came i was the 22 and right with my third and then i was 29 with my last did did i even hate to use this phrase but but did did it get any easier yes it did yeah and and the reality is i used it as birth control and that's a that's a hard thing to say you know a hard thing to admit but i did i i didn't like the way birth control made me feel i wasn't responsible if you could be responsible when you're having promiscuous sex i wasn't responsible and so when i would get pregnant that was the answer you know and i i was i was under the same lie that many women are that it was the best thing that i'm not have a child not only for me certainly for me but also for that child because i was in drug addiction i was in domestic violence i was in these things and so to bring that child into the world into those situations i was i believe the lie that it would be better for me not even to have that child and and there were a lot of people who were willing to perpetuate that lie i'm sure one hundred percent one hundred percent yeah i mean that was the common thing um and when you're under a shroud of deception you don't know the truth you know and you can't see the truth and you can't hear the truth and it's easy for those of us on the other side of truth to see people like that and and say you know how you're a murderer and how can you do that and but you have to understand they can't see the truth and so um you know i was there that was me one hundred percent i was blinded to the truth and and didn't didn't feel like i had any other options honestly and i know things work differently for different people but when i was going through all of the the missteps that i went through the cheating on my wife the pornography the drinking all of that the the the grounding that i got from having a dad who was a preacher and a pastor and and the home life that i had which was a good home life for a little boy growing up in the cold fields of southern west Virginia i had a great childhood but that never left me i i always knew what i was doing was wrong i was just able to shove it somewhere in the back of my head and and get rid of it for a while did did your upbringing and having a dad as a pastor did that stay with you through all of this stuff or did it completely leave you for a while it definitely stayed with me i think much like i ran from god i ran from my dad people people asked me all the time you know what was your dad saying in these times my dad didn't know a lot of what was going on because i was a runner and so he would know when i was doing badly because he wouldn't hear from me you know i wouldn't come home i wouldn't you know we didn't have phones like we have now where you have video and so it was a little bit of a different time but i would hide from him because i knew that my dad would see the truth and again the worst thing that could possibly happen is my dad to feel like say he was disappointed in me or for me to feel that from him and so it stuck with me but i i really can i always thought this is the truth i thought one day i'll grow up and i'll turn everything around and at that point i'll stop doing what i'm doing and i'll become a good person you know and i'll i'll do those things that i know i'm supposed to but right now i'm just having fun i'm just trying to you know live through the rock and roll lifestyle and and i just covered it with that you know and and the the voices in my head telling me 24/7 that i was worthless you know that i was no good that i that i was an embarrassment of those voices i would drown out with drugs and alcohol and so that led to a lot of the decisions that i made because i was i was living with that and then one night it almost led to you losing your life correct yeah i was living in New Orleans and had moved down there with a boyfriend and decided after it was a very violent relationship we decided that i was going to come home and we went out to party again one last night and the turn violent as it usually did he came home several hours later i came home and the fight intensified and there was a point in the evening where we had torn the door off the door frame and there was a a board a one by four or two by four laying on the ground and he pushes me down on the ground he picks up the board he's kneeling over top of me with the board he goes to hit me over the head with it and mid swing he drops the board and he punches me in the face several times my face explodes blood goes everywhere and he's like oh gosh i've actually really hurt her and so the fight stops and then the next morning i wake up and i have text messages and phone calls from my dad who is the last person you wouldn't talk to after a night like that so i didn't 24 hours later i got in my new hall with all my belongings and i came back to Virginia my dad meets me and i get out of the car my eyes are swollen shut they're black and blue my nose is flat and crooked my mouth is all busted up and as soon as he sees me he begins to cry i said oh dad you know i was in a car accident and he says kelly two nights ago i was asleep and in the middle of the night i was awoken by the lord and i had a vision of you laying dead on the floor with your head split wide open and so i began to pray and i realized that the night when my boyfriend had dropped the board was the night at the time when my father had been woken and prayed for me so my dad's prayers literally saved my life i didn't tell him that of course but then several weeks later i was sitting in the front pew of his church and he gave the altar call as he usually did and i heard the voice of god and it was not the voice that i had expected to hear it wasn't an angry judging yelling at me it was my dad it was my father god saying have you had enough and i then said but god you know how can you forgive me for all the things that i've been through how how can you ever forgive me for you know the the molestation and the rape and all the things and he said kelly if you follow me i will make beauty from ashes which i know now is scriptures as is 61 but i didn't recognize that at the time and and then i said but god you know how are you gonna make beautiful all these things and he didn't answer me because sometimes god speaks with an audible voice and other times god is silent but i can tell you that every single area of my life where the enemy meant to steal kill and destroy god has saved healed restored and redeemed and one of the ways is by doing things like this you know getting to share my story um bring hope to other people because you can't make beautiful being molested at three but when i share how god's healed me from that and it gives hope to somebody else you know that's god making it beautiful or being you know raped or running drugs but when there's a parent that hears that and their child is living in that situation and it gives them hope for their child that's how god makes it beautiful and so that's what he's done with every area of my life when you gave your life to christ and you finally started having these conversations with your dad did you find out that he knew a lot more about what was going on than you thought he did yeah he definitely suspected things for sure um you know he definitely had some ideas but i was a grown-up you know i was he didn't realize any of the things in high school like he didn't know about being raped he didn't know about being molested he didn't know about the abortions once i left the home and became an adult things took a dramatic turn and were a lot harder to hide and so he definitely had ideas but didn't know how to help me right um and unfortunately at that time i had a sister who ran away from home and so they were very focused on her she was much younger than me and so their focus was on her um a bit more than me but yeah he knew he definitely had some ideas i think there are two absolute truths here that that again i think we share in common number one sometimes you have to hit bottom and god god will allow you to hit bottom because when you do the only place you can look is up and and and you obviously had hit bottom and the other one is we we placate ourselves with this lie sometimes or the devil will lie to us and say well you need to really get yourself straightened up before god will accept you and it's just the opposite you have to come as you are and god will straighten you out sorry there's no way that you're going to get straight without him and so the that's that's i mean jesus speaks of that all throughout the bible and uh and that's definitely the reality of my life i i needed him in order to become straight and even with him it wasn't quick and easy you know it took work it took it took therapy it took reading my bible it took inner healing it took a community around me it took a husband who was speaking life over me um you know for that to change but jesus was the thing that opened the door for the possibility of any of those things so after all of this how did you meet your husband and and and this incredible family life you have now i mean six children and and doing everything that you're doing i mean god has obviously taken you from one extreme to the other yes well and you said 40 minutes is not enough time that's a whole nother episode on my husband but we actually dated in high school and uh met at the mcdonald's up the street for me he was a skater boy and i was a skater girl and we quote unquote dated that's very loose term for what we did and then uh he gave me a hickey and my dad forbid us from seeing each other and we separated for 13 years and then got connected through my space and he was living in california and i was in virginia and his profile came on and it was all about a missions trip that he had taken and so i contacted him and said oh my gosh you got saved i got saved too and uh he called me and the night that he got the message he wrote in his journal that i was the one that got away he was going to marry me the next day called me and i hung up the phone with him again he was in california i was in virginia and i turned to my best friend i said i think i just spoke to the man i'm gonna marry and a couple of months later we got married that that's that's that's an incredible story but i'm just laughing that you know again with everything that you've been through a hickey yeah of all of all things uh hickey i know i know there there there there is a there is a touch of hilarity in that kelly i'm sorry that's true if my dad only knew what was actually going on he'd have been happy about it yeah no no i i i get it trust me um sometime ago i was listening to i think it was dr david jeremya and he he was doing a sermon on forgiveness and the the topic of abortion came up and he was talking about how so many women that that he has counseled over the years they they have this this inability it seems to forgive themselves and and that sometimes is a barrier to them accepting christ but one of the things that he pointed out is that a god's forgiveness snows no bounds and b and b we believe that life begins at conception one day there's going to be a reunion in heaven with you and that child so you've you've got six children here but you've got a welcoming committee that's waiting on you in heaven right now do you ever think about that so tell you another funny story not funny story but touching story i i had a dog that when i was going through a lot of my craziness he was my kind of my grounder and when i moved back home after the the domestic fight and moved in with my parents this dog came with me about three weeks after living there he ran out of their house heard some hunting dogs ran out in the street and got hit by a car and died instantly and it was at up to that point it was the most devastating thing i'd ever experienced in my life and my dad the next morning told me that he had a dream and my dog's name was doji he had a dream and doji was in heaven running in a field and there were four children running with him wow and my dad did not know about the abortions did not know the number but as soon as he said it i knew and so it was like the lord was like i got this you know um so yeah i i definitely think about that the other time that i thought about it i've told my children now because my story is reasonably public um parts of my story and my older kids didn't really say anything about the children my youngest daughter when i told her she said wait mom so that means there would have been ten of us and i said well honey i don't know that there would have been ten of you because i don't know you know i don't know what the lord would have done but one day in heaven there will be ten of you and she it was like she needed that answer and she was like okay and then she moved on um so yeah you know those those kinds of moments um definitely i think about that it it has to be has to be comforting it it has it has to be i don't want want to use the word empowering probably not the right word but but it does have to give you the strength and the peace to know that that god is such a forgiving god and and the the blood of jesus covers every sin no matter what it is that even inside of that one day there's going to be a a happy heavenly union that's that's gotta be just uh i want to imagine a great comfort to someone who went down that road not once but four times yeah i mean that that's what god does right that is the making beauty for mashes that is taking something horrible and making it beautiful knowing that they are in heaven right now you know with him is is incredibly comforting and definitely um gives you a lot of strength to know in his grace he's so graceful and so merciful to um to do that and uh you know so yeah it's definitely a comforting thing and one of the evidences that god has something of a sense of humor i think is that he will take you out of a situation he'll get you cleaned up and he'll put you right back in it but in a different way and and now here you are working with people who have been in the abortion industry with through the and then there were none foundation and and trying to help others experience what you have experienced from that um you never knew that you were being called to be a missionary in this particular field did you no i did yeah when i when i share my story i often say you know the very thing that the enemy meant to come and destroy you with is the very thing that god wants to take to use to destroy the enemy and this certainly is one of those examples my experience in the abortion industry um gives me great and ammo to destroy the enemy and to help other people like myself come out what what are you seeing in your work now or are you seeing women who are beginning to understand and maybe even men i don't know you can tell me but who are beginning to understand it exactly how evil this is it takes a revelation like it really when you go in people go in thinking that they're helping thinking the believing the lies that you that we hear through the media believe in the lies that Planned Parenthood perpetuates they go in and see the realities and even when you're seeing the realities you don't see the realities you know you have scales on your eyes so with change only happens with those scales being removed and sometimes that's a situation you know of a baby being born alive or a woman hemorrhaging in an emergency you know in the recovery room or you know a dad outside pleading for her not to go through with this or whatever there there's something that has to happen that causes those scales to be removed and then you know then you all of a sudden see all the horrors and we have over 680 former workers who've left and the stories that we have to share about what we saw and what we experienced need to be heard and thankfully are getting out there but it you know it does take a revelation it really does but I mean but that's a praise almost 700 people who have come out of the industry and at the same time I would imagine that that Satan is throwing everything he can at you right now because of the work that you're doing oh absolutely yeah he hates it yeah yeah without without question how can people find out more about you and your story and in particular some of the things that you're involved in now if they want to help or if they want to ask questions just find more information Kelly how can they do that easiest way is on Facebook so you can go to Kelly Lester speaker on Facebook find me there ambassador speaker's bureau is who is my agent that books me to speak so you can contact me that way and then the organizations you can go to prolove.com and that will lead you to and then there were none inflow love ministries and then max global.org is the church and the missions organization that I work for well I can't tell you how thankful and grateful I am that you took the time especially again on short notice to share your story with us and I just hope and pray that you continue to have a marvelous effect on what is a great evil on society in the abortion industry people need to continue to speak up and I'm glad there are people like you on the front lines well thank you Dan I'm glad there are people like you asking the questions because you give us a way to do that so I appreciate you inviting me on that was a powerful interview with Kelly Lester we'll take a very quick break come back and put a wrap on this week's show right after this teenage boys and young men today are in crisis statistics show that a home without a father or male role model present is the single biggest indicator of poverty behavior issues drug and alcohol abuse criminal activity and yes imprisonment a grand slam ministry is one of our core missions is developing a mentorship program to teach boys how to become strong Christian men and then teach those men to be the biblical husband's fathers and church community leaders the bible calls us to be we need your prayers we need your ideas and we need your support visit our website grand slam ministries dot org to find out more about our mentorship mission and prayerfully consider how you may be able to assist us again that website is grand slam ministries dot org follow us on social media search grand slam ministries on facebook and grand slam for god on twitter and don't forget Dan's personal and public figure sites on facebook twitter and instagram you're listening to the Dan scott show presented by grand slam ministries we are back for the quickest of quick goodbyes on this week's edition of the show 78th edition of the Dan scott show our thanks again to kelly Lester for making herself available back in january if you had not heard that interview today and I know we've added a couple of affiliates since then i hope you really enjoyed that if you have heard it I hope you gleaned something new out of it we look forward to being back with you again next week we'll be over the course of at least the next three or four weeks replaying some of the interviews that we've done inside the last six months or so in our summer replay series but we have got a ton of new guests that will be coming up in the not too distant future working on some other things as well I would just ask you to continue to pray for what we are doing here that we would follow god's will for this not our own and that he would bless this thing he's already blessing it continue to bless it and open doors for us financially and otherwise to do what he has called us to do here and just that we would stay in his will and not get ahead of him on anything thank you again for your attention for your prayers and we will be back with you again next week for another edition of the dance got show until then i'm dan god bless you and so long everybody thank you for listening to this week's dan scott show here again catch up on past shows or find out more about grand slam ministries please visit our website dan scott show dot org and while they're carefully consider making a gift to help us in our mission to share the love of jesus christ that's the dan scott show dot org you [BLANK_AUDIO]