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Drug Bust a Different Kind of 'Good News'
ESSEX, IA (March 14, 2000) - Don Nelson has been preaching the Good News for six years in a small town in Iowa, but the church he pastors received good news of another sort recently.
On March 12, area police conducted a drug bust at a home located across the street from Faith Evangelical Covenant Church and found an illegal methamphetamine laboratory. One day later, an Essex man pleaded guilty to charges stemming from a fight that led police to the home. The drug bust culminated a year-long investigation, according to a story in the March 15 edition of the Omaha World Herald.
"There's been a lot of traffic here . . . where people will make a five-minute stop and then drive off," said Nelson, who pastors the Covenant church in Essex, a town with a population of 900 located an hour southeast of Omaha. "We've been praying for a while - people at our prayer meetings were on their knees about this," Nelson said. "The drug problem here is enormous."
Nelson said he and his wife returned home after celebrating their wedding anniversary to find their street blocked off. He later discovered that police had disassembled the laboratory after they were called to investigate the fight.
Living across the street from a drug-trafficking operation has been difficult for the church, the pastor observed. Although Nelson is pleased that his church is rid of a disruptive influence in the neighborhood and community, he hopes that Christ's influence can bring about further change. "Our prayer is that not only the drug trafficking would get cut off, but that God would change their lives," Nelson said. "They're suffering from their wrong choices."
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