Billy Graham's daughter Ruth coming to Portstewart

Billy Graham is probably the most famous Christian alive today.

Millions of people say their lives have been transformed through his ministry, including many in Northern Ireland.

His daughter, Ruth Graham is coming to Northern Ireland for a few days next week to tell her story - the preacher’s kid who felt the pressure of being a famous evangelist’s daughter and who used to pretend everything was OK when in fact her world was falling apart.

As she grew up she had a deeply spiritual experience which survived boarding school and the 70’s hippie culture. However, her world fell apart in the 90’s when she discovered her husband had been unfaithful.

After divorce, she remarried on the rebound and realised soon she had made a horrible mistake as many had been trying to warn her. She was afraid to go back home but eventually loaded up everything and drove back to her mum and dad’s.

She thought “what are they going to say to me?” She tells the story: “As I rounded the last bend in my father’s driveway, Daddy was waiting for me. He wrapped his arms around me and said ‘welcome home’ and there was an incredible time of waiting and healing and reconciliation.”

What followed was a time of turmoil, she says, a personal, emotional and spiritual crisis. Ruth discovered in her own journey that her main audience is not other people’s expectation but an audience of one - her God and Lord. “If He is happy with me, then that’s OK,” she says, adding that she hopes in sharing her own experiences, she can help others to encounter Jesus in a fresh way.

Ruth is speaking in Portstewart Baptist church on Sunday, October 8 at 7pm.

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