Bound to a Promise, Trusting God When the Unthinkable Happens

FORT WORTH, Texas - Jan. 13, 2014 - PRLog -- It was a cold, ordinary morning in Fresno, California when Bonnie Floyd answered the phone call that would change her life forever. That date—February 1, 1994, would be seared in her heart as the day her parents had been brutally murdered. “They didn’t suffer, Mrs. Floyd; they were shot in their sleep…”Stunned and despairing, Bonnie cried out to God, “They’re dead. They’re gone, and they didn’t have time to call on Jesus.”


Bound to a Promise tells the amazing true story of God’s faithfulness in the face of unimaginable loss. Bonnie Floyd’s father and stepmother had been living a dream life—traveling around the world in a sailboat and then serving as caretakers of a private island in the English Channel. That life was cut short when three young men boarded their yacht as it was anchored off the coast of Barbuda in the Wes Indies. Determined that there should be “no witnesses” of their theft and brutality, the assailants shot all four people on board.

For several years prior to that terrible day in 1994, Bonnie and her husband, Donnie, had been seizing every opportunity to share the gospel with her parents. “I had done all I knew to do to share Jesus with them. They had come a long way in their views of who Jesus was. They acknowledged his hand at work in their lives and in ours, and they were never against a suggestion to pray,” Bonnie recalls. “To this day I can still see the intensity in my father’s blue eyes and the assurance on his face when he said, ‘I promise you, if I ever get into a position where I fear for my life, I will call on the name of Jesus, but I have never been, nor will I ever be in a position where I am not in total control.’”  Within six months, Bonnie’s parents were dead.

In the coming months and years, as God began to reveal what really happened that night off the shore of Barbuda, Bonnie found not just the assurance that she would see her parents again in heaven, but also the power to forgive. Bound to a Promise includes the fascinating account of the Antiguan trial that brought her parents’ killers to justice, featuring some dashing Scotland Yard detectives, a criminal in search of redemption, and many other memorable characters from the island. Bonnie’s colorful descriptions of her parents’ adventures abroad and her time in Antigua lighten the mood and add a touch of travelogue to the true crime drama. In a truly inspirational twist, Bonnie arranges a meeting with one of the confessed attackers, a man who would eventually claim her as family.

As a speaker and bible teacher, Bonnie has shared her story with thousands of people—particularly women—across the country. Many of them can relate to the obstacles she overcame early in life. Bonnie was a young teenager when her parents divorced and her beloved father left. By the time she reached her 20s, she had grown accustomed to a feeling of abandonment. “It was obvious when people leave me, they don’t come back.” Bonnie remembers.  “Every boy or man I had ever loved had broken my heart. With a track record like that, I was in desperate need for unconditional love.” Bonnie finally found the love she was looking for in Jesus Christ; her daily efforts to share the promise of that love with others are the common threads woven through each chapter of Bound to a Promise and what drives Bonnie in her life today.

“I am thankful for the absolute certainty that my dad had kept his promise to me,” Bonnie says, “but even more significant, I’m thankful for the assurance that my God has kept His—that everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved.”

Bound to a Promise
A True Story of Love, Murder and Redemption
By Bonnie Floyd
Creative Enterprises Studio, Publisher
November 2013

www.BonnieFloyd.com