From a BUDDHIST MONK to a FOLLOWER OF CHRIST

At a young age, Zac Vachikhan found himself  hanging around bad influences as a result of   unresolved issues concerning his father. I grew  up without my dad. He left when I was pretty   young and you know throughout my life I’ve  always wondered why he left and I   always had this feeling that it was my fault. So I started getting into the wrong crowd,   I just had that didn’t-care mentality. As his  insecurities took over and depression set in,   Zac looked to drugs for the answer. I started  smoking weed at the age of 11 or 12 all the way   to about last year. That’s 11 years and on top of  that I was always partying and trying to   fill this void, just try to just flush out reality. And so I was always partying every weekend,   getting drunk and then I was introduced to pills. That really was my escape,   I was high almost every day, almost off any narcotic I could find- Xanax,   Adderall. I just had to have something.  

Still void of peace, Zac turned to his family’s   religion of Buddhism and even went as far  as becoming a monk. I became a monk, trying to find inner peace, trying to overcome these things and I only felt like I was   going more down because I couldn’t even live up  to that expectation.  I couldn’t succeed at anything I did and so  that was really discouraging and it brought   me deeper into depression. Living as a Buddhist  monk seemed to leave Zach worse off than before,   life had become too heavy for Zach to carry any  longer. 

Then one night, I just thought to   myself “I’m just dead weight”. My mom hides  her gun in her room. I went and grabbed it and ran downstairs  and locked my door, turn up the music and tried   to pull the trigger but it just jammed. I figured it was a sign somehow. Zac had planned   to commit suicide once more but was caught by a  friend who had stopped him in the act. I was gonna   hang myself but he snuck through my window and  found me and took the rope from me, stayed with me that night and made  sure I didn’t do anything. I just poured out to   him- like I don’t know why I can’t do  anything right in my life, why I am the way I am. 

After some convincing, his friend had talked him  into coming to youth service that next day. The   presence here was amazing. It was really good  but it was weird for me to see how much people   care, like I wonder where all  this excitement and love and stuff   was coming from. Why these people worship this  God so much, because I’m over here going through   what I’m going through and I just didn’t believe  in a God. The word spoken that night had reached   Zac in a way that nothing else had. I was  being touched. I felt really really convicted   but in a good way, like it reevaluated in  my life and I went home and I cried. I didn’t   make it to 20 minutes of the service  but I went home and I cried and something   sparked in me. Somehow found a Bible in  a Buddhist home, it was kind of ironic and then   I read through Psalms and proverbs in one sitting  and I just got curious, like what does this mean,   like why do I feel the way I feel? That following  Sunday, Zac was back in church and gave his life   to Christ. I felt this push to  come up on the altar call so I gave my life.   Things have been great, set free from  drugs. I never went back. I actually found a big   packet of pills and I called my girlfriend and  told her that I just didn’t want to do it anymore. So I flushed them and then God has taken me  through so much now. Me and my girlfriend   were living a sinful life and we decided to  separate, try to focus on God and   now we’re getting married and we’re  both serving in the church and it’s   it’s amazing to be in an environment where  people care and to feel the presence of God,   to know what true love and true peace is. My  name is Zac Vachikhan and this is my testimony.