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LANSING, MI - from www.publicbroadcasting.net - -

A former stripper is trying to help women in Michigan leave the adult entertainment industry through her new ministry. Eve's Angels' is spreading from its roots in west Michigan.

Anny Donewald [pictured] was raised in an upper-middle class home near Grand Rapids. She's beautiful, with blue eyes and long blond hair. In a small Free Methodist church in Lansing, Donewald tells a group of woman she was 19 when a couple girls approached her at college; told her she'd be a natural dancing in nightclubs.

"I entered into the amateur night at a club in Kalamazoo and I won. And you know $200 for 3 minutes on stage or whatever I was like wow, this might not be so bad."

But when Donewald got a job at a Lansing club things started getting bad. "About 2 weeks in I'm sitting in the back and just distraught. Like just I don't know how I entered in this. I dropped out of college, I'm doing coke, and I'm drunk all the time," Donewald said.

Donewald's life continued to spiral out of control. She got numerous abortions and became a prostitute. She was robed raped, divorced and pregnant again. At that point she began to pray. "I said God I don't know if you're real. I said but if you're real and you can hear me you need to stop this because I'm not going to," Donewald said, "I had to make 5 different appointments to get this abortion and they all ended up being cancelled."

Months after her son was born, Denowald says she had an epiphany.

"All of the sudden *gasps* I get it. And instantaneously knew that Jesus was real. I knew he was realer than you are. I knew he was the only way to get to God. I knew heaven was real. I knew hell was real. And I knew that I was forgiven."

Donewald says no little girl grows up wanting to be a stripper. She not only left the industry, she also felt called to help other women leave and created Eve's Angels. "I'm going to tell the church - because the church is going to be so excited about my stripper ministry! (laughs sarcastically) Get out," Donewald says the church told her.

"I got the left foot of fellowship at the church as they told me, we don't really have any room for you and your little so-called ministry."

The dancers at the clubs weren't open to her ministry either. Donewald says trying to tell strippers what to do didn't work so she changed her tactics. Now when she goes to strip clubs she brings a gift bag with a bible and other items. "I remember being in the industry and everybody wanting something from me and Jesus doesn't want anything from them," Donewald said, "He didn't want anything from me. He just wanted me to know that he loved me."

When the meeting ends, two of the women need to get to work at the same Lansing club where it all began for Donewald.

We meet outside the club in the mostly empty parking lot. It's about 9 o'clock on a weeknight. Every week after her bible studies, Donewald visits women working in gentlemen's clubs - sometimes in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and tonight for the first time in Lansing.

Rachelle Funk is a volunteer with Eve's Angels. This is her third night out. "I grew up a pastor's daughter, went to Christian college, like I've never been in a strip club or even a regular club like dancing or anything," Funk laughs at the absurdity of us four 20 to 30-something women heading into the strip club. I should say no public radio dollars were spent at the strip club.

It's surreal watching some of the same women from the church now dancing on stage. Women like Shawne Honderd. Hondered is not surprised the first church Donewald approached rejected Eve's Angels. Hondered says a church rejected her too when they discovered she was a stripper. "The church, in my opinion, they'll love you as long as you fall in their plan," Hondered explains, "But if you don't, there's no love for you."

Honderd says the love Donwald offers is huge. But she admits building trust between strippers, prostitutes or actors in pornography and any ministry is a challenge even for someone who has walked in their shoes.

"You're trying to take these girls that are taught by all these religions that they're no good. They're worthless, they're good for nothing because of what they do. And you're trying to take them and say - these people are wrong."

Hondered says Eve's Angels gives her hope that one day she too be able to walk away from stripping for good. But Hondered says a lot of dancers don't have the tools to get out.

"A lot of people don't' have the tools necessary to make the moves. Well Anny and Eve's Angels are putting those tools out there because a lot of people will get lost. They'll have their moment but they're going to get lost if they don't have somebody to guide them."

Donewald is working to spread her ministry. Eventually, she hopes to raise enough money to have a home where women trying to get out of the industry can stay, and get all the financial and emotional support they need to create a new, positive identity.