My name is Anna. I would like to tell my testimony of how I started seeking the Lord. In 1988, while living in Tennessee, I was a store manager for a fast food restaurant. One day while on duty, I heard this lady in the front dinning room very upset about a day-old newspaper that she had gotten from the newspaper box outside our establishment. She insisted on her thirty cents back because she didn’t want old news. So, I told the young lady on the cash register to give her the thirty cents, and then I would buy the paper for myself. So, I personally took the day-old newspaper and headed for a place to read it. As I read the headlines of the daily news, I was amazed at what I was reading – “88 Reasons Why the World Will End in September of 1988!” Here it was, just a few days into the first of the month, and I was finding out the world was going to end!
As I read the article, I pondered over the question, “Is the world really going to end?” Or, was this just an article to print to help sell newspapers. I thought, “this is just my luck.” This has been the story of my life, “a day late and a dollar short.”
The question of what would happen to me if I did die consumed me. I was afraid, and I was filled with fear of having to stand before the Lord because I knew deep in my heart that He would say to me, “Depart from me. . .” I JUST KNEW I WOULD BE CAST INTO HELL!
I began to ask my co-workers about this article. No one seemed to really care if it was true or not, and I wasn’t quite sure myself. I went home from work and told my husband that I needed to talk to him. We sat down at the kitchen table, and I showed him the article. I told him I thought we needed to start serving the Lord, straighten up our lives, and put things in order. As I spoke, he became angry about what I was asking him to do. He even laughed at me for taking the article so seriously. He said that no man knows the day or hour that the world was going to end! He also said that he wasn’t going anywhere. He had been raised in and out of different denominations all of his life, and he did not want to be a hypocrite. He said that if I wanted to go somewhere that was fine with him, but leave him alone.
So, I did. I began to look for a place to attend. As the date for the world to end got closer, I felt a fear that I had never felt before in my life. Soon the day came, and the world did not end. What a relief!
When I looked back at how I had acted about the world ending, I really got serious about seeking the Lord. I tried several different places, but nothing seemed to make me feel real peace like I knew my sister Tammy had. I went to a prayer meeting in December 1988 in Louisville, KY that my sister invited me to. For the first time in my life, I began to feel the peace I had so longed for. I continued to attend these prayer meetings, driving all the way from Tennessee to Kentucky. In April of 1989, I received the holy Ghost baptism.
I thank Jesus that, since that wonderful experience, I no longer have a fear of standing before him someday when the end of the world really does come. I found the peace I was looking for. And a few months later, my husband, Stuart, began seeking the Lord and received the holy Ghost, too!