Jim's Book

8 Winning the Lottery

After Jim's divorce he was lonely. He missed marriage and especially his children. ‘I'd never thought I would get divorced and felt a great sense of shame, and failure,' Jim said. ‘I'm very monogamous by nature. I have a temperament that is totally satisfied with one woman, and I don't function well alone.'

After the divorce he continued attending the Mormon Church, which is strongly against sex before marriage. Soon after he met a young Christian woman who attended a different church. ‘We did the wrong thing,' Jim admitted, ‘which was devastating because it was against my core principles and beliefs'. After confessing in an agonising interview with his bishop, he felt such turmoil and guilt that he left the Mormons and began attending another equally strict church.

There, several months later, he met a young Filipino woman, Vivian (who declined to be interviewed). ‘At the time, she seemed the most beautiful woman in the world,' Jim said. He was soon madly in love, but the church did not approve. ‘They thought I should go back to Felicity,' Jim said, and they put pressure on Vivian to break up with him. Desperate not to lose her, he arranged to fly with her to the Philippines to meet her parents, his fear of losing her greater than his fear of flying. ‘I'm insane when it comes to love,' Jim admitted. They married in the Philippines in 1993 after knowing each other for just six weeks.

Vivian quickly fell pregnant, and their son, Tom, was born in February ...