EAST COBB - This year, a small and poor Presbyterian church in Detroit will celebrate its first warm Christmas in 10 years, thanks to the help of best-selling author and sports writer Mitch Albom.

Albom, perhaps best known for his popular book, "Tuesdays with Morrie," has authored a new book about faith titled, "Have a Little Faith: A True Story." He spoke about the book Sunday evening to a packed audience at Congregation Etz Chaim on Indian Hills Parkway in east Cobb.

The event was a joint presentation by Etz Chaim, Mt. Zion United Methodist Church and the Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, all located nearby in east Cobb.

Albom, 51, who is Jewish, shared the stories of two very different men of faith. One is a black man, Pastor Henry Covington, who grew up impoverished in Brooklyn and chose a life of crime. The other was Albert Lewis, Albom's well-to-do rabbi from his childhood in New Jersey, who asked Albom to give his eulogy.

Through Albom's charity work for the homeless in his adopted hometown of Detroit, Albom met Covington, pastor of I Am My Brother's Keeper ministry. For years the church, which ministers to the homeless, had a hole in its roof, and congregants would pray even as it rained and snowed inside.

But thanks to 10 percent of Albom's book sales and other donations from around the world, the church has been able to fix the roof. A ceremony will be conducted there on Wednesday.

The celebration is the culmination of a tumultuous life that Covington has led. According to Albom, he grew up in a small, rat-infested apartment with his family. His mother attempted to kill his father for cheating and was sent to prison. He later sold drugs, became addicted and a thief. But, one night after he tried to rob his own drug dealers, he had asked Jesus to save him from the situation.

After becoming a minister, Covington invited Albom to his family's crumbling home and told him that he probably wouldn't go to heaven because he'd broken all 10 Commandments in his earlier life.

"You can't work your way into heaven," Albom remembered Covington telling him. "And that's not what I'm trying to do. All I ask is that the Lord grant me some time on Earth so that when I die, my record here on this planet isn't just a bad one. Give me some days to do some good. Then I'm at your mercy for wherever you choose to send me."

As for Rabbi Lewis, Albom didn't know him very well, and it was a shock when the 82-year-old rabbi asked Albom to deliver his eulogy. Instead of turning him down, Albom said he wanted to get to know him better and the two met regularly until Lewis died at age 90.

Albom described Lewis as a kind, wise and humorous man who was known for turning anyone into a friend - even the Catholic priest at the church next door who once told a synagogue member that the Holocaust didn't kill enough Jews. But after Lewis extended a hand of friendship, the priest and Lewis became so close that Lewis gave the eulogy at the priest's funeral.

In their conversations of eight years, Albom recalled the wisdom Lewis shared with him about life.

Babies enter the world with their fists closed to take whatever they want from the world, but when people turn old they open their palms because they know they can't take anything with them, Lewis once told him. On marriage, Lewis said couples have to concentrate on the times they're happy together because no two people can love without experiencing unhappiness.

Albom also said he once asked Lewis how he could still believe in God after Lewis's daughter died at age 4 from an asthma attack.

Albom said he never forgot Lewis's answer: "It was because I had somebody to cry to, complain to, to ask why, to howl at, that I was ultimately able to heal," Lewis responded. "It's far better to believe that God is there - and for whatever reason he could not answer your particular prayer - than to think that nothing is out there."

And the secret to happiness, said Lewis, is to be satisfied and grateful for all you have from God, Albom recalled.

"In all the days, weeks, months and years that have passed, I've not been able to crack a hole in that particular theory of happiness," Albom told the audience.