KISSIMMEE (FBC)—Amie Smith sat in the Osceola County Jail, charged with resisting arrest after drugs were found in the car in which she was riding. The drugs were not hers - this time - but after years of drug and alcohol abuse, Smith's past had caught up with her.

"I can honestly describe it as waking up and staring Satan in his eyes every single day," said Smith. "It overtook my entire being. The only focus in my life was to get high."

"It left me with nowhere to live. I had lost my job and living day-to-day just to use drugs. I was absolutely miserable."

Fully expecting her mother to bail her out, Smith, 33 at the time, soon discovered no one had any intention to help her.

"It was so difficult to watch your child slowly destroy herself and not be able to prevent it," said her mother Sandy Smith, a Christian who had constantly prayed for her daughter.

Calling it "tough love," she added, "I knew if I bailed her out, she would do the exact same things she had been doing. If she was there, she couldn't get to the drugs. I knew she was safe. And it gave her time to think about what she was doing."

When Amie "settled down" and realized she would be serving out her jail sentence, she passed the time by reading the Bible. This time, words took on new meaning. She started attending church services and a Christ-centered 12-step class taught in the jail.

"I knew about God and I knew that Jesus died for my sins," recalled Amie. "But I had no clue of the abundant life that I would have in Him.

"In that jail I found hope. I found my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. My mother's prayers after all those years had finally been answered."

Leading the 12-step class was Tina Mahood, a member of First Baptist Church of Kissimmee. Mahood teaches the 12-step class at the Osceola County Jail, with a passion for this ministry, after Christ delivered her from her own depths of despair.

A former alcoholic, drug addict and prostitute, Mahood had been arrested 23 times in Osceola County, alone. She had been involved in numerous car accidents while driving under the influence, including one that shattered the right side of her face and required three operations to restore her face. In a bar fight, she suffered a blood clot that required brain surgery.

On March 21, 1994, she was arrested for the last time. "This became the greatest day of my life. This time I fell to my knees and asked Jesus into my life."

Having been in and out of jail most of her adult life, Mahood recalled, "I had been approached by many Christian women who had volunteered in the jails. That along with my fathers' prayers, encouragement and hope, I knew that the answer was in Jesus."

Her life was never the same.

After becoming involved in church and attending recovery meetings, within a year, Mahood followed her passion and began a weekly ministry to women at the county jail. More than 60 women have been "transformed" through her ministry.

In 2003 Mahood encountered Smith, calling her, "the woman with curly hair who sat in the front row of my class in the jail. She had such a passion for God and gave hope to so many other women who were inmates."

When Smith left jail as a transformed life, she chose to enter a Christian residential program affiliated with the Greater Orlando Baptist Association which provided her additional recovery help and trained for the work force through Christian Job Corps. "By eliminating the distractions of the world and with the classes taught there, I grew closer to Christ."

Today, Smith, 38, and Mahood, 49, are joining forces to give hope to other women imprisoned by their own addictions and failures. The two women, both members of First Baptist Kissimmee, are laying the foundation for a 12-month residential program "Transformational Ministries of Osceola County," under the auspices of the church's Christian ministry center.

"Our mission is to provide a loving and Christian environment where women can receive God's gift of salvation and be transformed by the renewing of the minds through the gospel," said Smith, who will direct the program.

The ministry is greatly needed, said Mahood, who has gone back to college to receive her GED and become a certified addiction counselor. Currently when women are released from jail and prison, they have no place to go, she explained, even if they have accepted Christ. They have no jobs, no job skills and no place to live. They are forced to return to the only life they know, which can have deadly consequences..

Mahood tells the heartbreaking story of Pam, a young woman she led to Christ while in jail. "Once she was released, she had no place to go. While back on the streets, trying to make it on her own, she was later found dead, decapitated." Others of the new believers have had their own struggles.

"They want to change," Mahood said. "They are searching for hope—the hope we have inside us. But the fear of stepping out of the only life they know cripples them."

Smith now looks back at her arrest through the eyes of faith. "I am so grateful I went to jail. I am thankful to God for sending me to jail. And I am thankful to my mother for being tough."

For further information on this ministry go to: www.godstranformation.org.