The circumstances surrounding my birth are "shameful even to speak of" (Ephesians 5:11). For me, they serve as a reminder that God intended for me to be here so that I could testify of His goodness. I know that Jesus loved me ever since I was a little girl. (Well, since the foundation of the world really - Ephesians 1:4.) I remember a time when I was about three or four years old, sitting outside in my Barbie car calling loudly for the angels to come down. Another time, as my mom tucked me in to bed, I asked her if my vitamins would make me as big as God. (I think she told me yes. At that age, I imagined God as a huge golden statue.) Yet another time, during a trip to the bathroom during the night, I felt something missing in my little life. I decided I ought to invent a religion based on my favorite doll. There was always a longing for God in my heart, I just didn't know what it was.

One day when I was about six, the woman who provided daycare in her home for me and several other kids invited us to do a bible study. She was a religious woman who maintained decent, though at times superstitious, standards. She told us to wait until we left her house to ask our parents' permission to do the study. As soon as my mom came, I ran over and asked her! The provider rebuked me, but I was super excited and my mom had said yes. I liked listening to the bible stories, learning the books of the Bible in order, and even having a children's bible made by the provider's Christian sect. During that time we had Christian neighbors who I stayed with whenever my mom had to go away, which could be a lot since she was in the military. The parents and oldest child regarded me as "fast" (inappropriately mature), but I enjoyed being around them. They had order in their home, though I didn't always like it, and they went to church. I thought decent people went to church.

At the church that family went to, I was never allowed to have the juice/wine and wafer they took ceremonially every few weeks. This was because I hadn't been water baptized. Once a man was calling for people to be baptized that day, and he said he felt that someone in the section I was sitting in needed it. I figured he specifically meant me, but I was too embarrassed to go up there so I didn't. (I was funny-looking at the time!) God gave that family a special place in my life, but He maintained a separation between me and Christian religion.

For a few years after we moved from there, there were no memorable godly influences in my life. By age 11, I proudly declared that there was no God. The predominant South American and Caribbean population at my new middle school did not agree! One friend told me to pray for God to give a sign that He existed. I didn't. Gradually, I started a habit of cutting myself and abusing medicines to deal with overwhelming emotions. (I was always very sensitive.) I had been depressed and suicidal for the past few years - over my terrible relationship with my mom, the cruel taunting I'd received for my appearance, but really because I didn't know God. I had a few close friends who knew what I was doing, but we were too foolish to realize its gravity.

After going to a rock music event at my high school one night, I left my house key in my mom's vehicle. The next morning, since she was at work, I didn't want to leave the door unlocked when I went to school. Something was calling me back inside anyway, so I stayed home. I remembered that the girl I went to the rock show with had said that the book of Revelation was scary. (We'd been listening to a rap song that referenced it.) I was very interested in death at that time since my grandpa had recently died, so I went to read it in a family Bible that was in my room. I think it was something about virginity that distracted me as I flipped through the pages. Despite the inappropriate knowledge I had as a child, chastity was always important to me - and here it was in the Bible! I must have kept on reading, because by the end of the day I would say that I was a "believer". (I wish I could remember it all!)

I started trying to be a good Christian. I felt bad about using foul language and about the theory of evolution when it was taught in biology class. It wasn't until the summer we moved to a new city that I really felt bad about other things - namely, listening to foul music and harming myself. That new conscience was God loving me. While watching a testimony on a Christian TV show about a young woman who used to cut herself, I became sick and started crying. How could I have not known that such behavior was wrong? (She had mentioned reading Mark chapter 5.) I think God put it in my heart immediately who to call. There was a girl at my previous high school who I knew was raised by parents who had a mind towards God. Her mom was in the room during the call, telling her what to tell me: I had to pray for God to make me speak in tongues; it was a prayer language and it would help me. Until then I had only heard of speaking in tongues as a spooky thing that normal people didn't do. God fixed that! Speaking in tongues is in the Bible, but no one I knew had mentioned that part.

I went into the closet and prayed (Matthew 6), but no "tongues" came out. I left it alone. Over the next few months, I searched for the right Christian church to go to. I searched the Internet; I asked friends and classmates what they believed if I perceived that they had "a form of godliness". I became strange, in that if a Christian said to do something and I saw that most people didn't, I'd do it. I wanted to be normal, and I perceived that holiness was normal. By now I had stopped cutting myself because of an incident that sent me, and my previously unaware mother, to the emergency room. I had thrown out all of my Cd's, as well as any item that evoked memories of previous ungodly behavior. Much of this was based on a very literal understanding of things I read in the Bible. What I did know for certain was that I needed to be baptized, or else I would suffer forever in hell after I died. I no longer believed that calling myself a Christian would save me, but that God required more for the salvation of my soul.

At the start of that school year, I met a certain guy in the group I hung out with.... This is hard to explain. I felt that I already knew him, and I cared for him deeply, though I'd forget him soon after our group parted for classes. I couldn't even remember his name at first. Something inside me focused on him directly, yet I couldn't think about him when I tried. Though we barely knew each other, I suggested that we keep in touch when he moved 45 minutes away. Over time, those feelings would make sense.

One day in spring, I came across either John Clark or Gary Savelli's website. I probably got there by researching speaking in tongues after seeing it cruelly mocked on a Christian website I visited. The things I now read, about being baptized with God's spirit and living free from sin, made sense. Nothing in Christianity so rightly aligned with what Jesus said; now I had found the answer my heart had been longing for (Matthew 7:8). Jesus would baptize me after I repented, and it wasn't at any human's discretion when I was worthy to be saved: whether after a month at their church or whatever their requirements were. I wouldn't have to pretend that the baptismal water had done anything to me! Gary and Pastor John and other saints began emailing me with encouragement to seek God with all my heart, and with answers to my many, many questions. I loved being able to discuss the things of God so openly with people. I hid the correspondence, and my faith, from my mom because I feared persecution. The change in me was obvious, but in suppressing my love for God my faith was weakened.

The next few years served as proof of the unsteadiness in my heart. I knew I ought to seek God with all of my heart for the holy Spirit, but I kept putting it off until a time when I thought it would be convenient. By the time I was in college, my double-mindedness had manifested to the point that I often prayed for God to keep me alive so that I might seek Him again. How absurd! But God was more merciful than I was absurd, and He waited for me.... and He made it convenient for me to finish with sin. He didn't put me into a harmful situation to draw me toward Him; I had been in several of those, and He had mercy using the sinners around me to take care of me however He saw best. God used the guy I met in high school - John, who had become my best friend and lately my "boyfriend" - to plead with my foolish heart.

John and I loved each other very much, and had become extremely close and loyal friends even though we were rarely together in person. Though we told each other everything, we both kept hidden our interest in knowing God. Over time we had become people we knew better than to be, and even our love for each other became fickle. Still, John asked me to marry him.

John's proposal knocked some sense into me. I knew that God's people are only supposed to marry God's people (Deuteronomy 7:3). I knew that I wanted to receive the holy Spirit, which would make me one of God's people (Romans 8:9). I knew that I loved John more than anyone on earth, and that he needed to have the holy Ghost, too, in order to be saved in the end (Ephesians 4:30). I had been certain for a while that God intended John to be my husband if anyone would be, and the logical conclusion to all of this was that we both must repent and be baptized if we would ever be happy. I told John where I had been spiritually over the past few years, and about the holy Spirit. He hadn't known that he needed it, but he had also felt a calling from God throughout his life. My heart was so relieved - God was so merciful to me. I agreed to marry John if we both received holy Ghost. We spent the summer in repentance and seeking.

God didn't have to do it, but the feeling that John and I were encouraging each other helped me make up my mind to live right. We visited the saints that gather at Pastor John's house after preparing our hearts to go. I was confident that I had done all I could to repent, to the point where I told people at school simply that I was visiting family. (I would be a child of God when I left.) I was happy that John was coming as well, but our purpose was to get Something from God, not to hang out. The first day I was there my lips kept moving on their own. I thought I was shivering, but I wasn't cold. When we were all about to eat lunch, the "shivering" was happening more and I quickly became drunk (of God's Spirit). I was so drunk that I barely remember how things happened, but almost immediately I began to speak in tongues! I was aware of John on the other side of the room smiling at what was happening to me. Within minutes, he was born again too! There were many of God's people gathered around us praying, laughing, crying and singing songs. I liked that our first "meeting" (a gathering of the saints) took place after we were baptized. It's just so wonderful.

John and I were married in a civil ceremony two months after we were baptized. We had planned to do so over a year from then, but we both felt that it shouldn't wait. I didn't have a pure heart growing up, but I believe it was God's mercy that prevented me from "dating" and reserved John for me. My faith in that keeps me reminded of Jesus' love for me, and it prevents many of the problems that typically occur in relationships. There are many more things that I would like to tell, but the point of them all is that the Lord has been full of mercy toward me my entire life.

I was born the first time because God willed it, and it was the same way when I was born again. I can be normal because my heavenly Father is normal. He’s so good!

    Parents stress to the children
    the importance of making their lives
    valuable to others.