TESTIMONY

This is my testimony to the Lord’s love: God knew me before He formed me in my mother’s womb. I cannot give you one significant point in my life when the Lord began to work. He has been working all along. He healed me from meningitis at the age of 21 months, when the doctors (mistakenly/or not?) told my parents that it was spinal meningitis and I wouldn’t be able to walk or dance or live a normal life. The Lord proved them wrong! My life was then given to the Lord at age 7. Two years later as my family moved to California, we drifted away from church. The difficulties of the teenage years, I always wished I were like my friends at school who knew the Lord, but I didn’t understand how to get there because I thought I was there. When I turned 19 I got married. We bought a condo at age 21, had a baby at age 23, and decided our marriage was unhappy at age 25. We divorced when our baby was 1 year old. After the divorce I lived out the end of my rebellious teenage life style with greater access to funding life destroying activities. My brother continued to bring me to church, praying for me. 1 year after my divorce I was reading my Bible at home, heavily immersed in the Old testament (I mean after all if the Jews believe this part and the Christians, that’s almost everyone – based on that, I have a pretty good chance of being right if I believe in the Old testament). I then read a verse like I had never seen it before: John 1:1 and understood that Jesus really was God. This led me to John 3:16 God loved the world He sent His only begotten son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. My eyes were opened. I slowly began to learn what obedience was and how sinful my life was. At the end of 1996, I crashed my car, giving up my worldly counselors and their medications and I turned to Jesus as my Heavenly counselor. He began healing my mind, my heart and my body. Part of that healing occured when I broke my wrist while horse back riding at the end of 1997 with a new Christian girl friend. My wrist took 6 months to heal. I was blessed with time to read God’s word and work worldly influences out of my life. One year later I went forward as a public confession of my sin when Miles McPherson was at Horizon on Sunday night. Through Miles, God had stirred my rebellious nature, irritating me enough to continue attending church. He yelled at the congregation, “If you’re living your life in sin, GO HOME!” He listed many of my obvious sins at the time and I was MAD, “He can’t tell me that I can’t come to church!” So I continued to go to church and live how I wanted to. Through God’s grace, on November 12, 1998 I went forward and publicly acknowledged that I am a sinner and I need Jesus to constantly forgive me. On Valentine’s Day of the next year I was baptized. I started attending Home Fellowship and at this time I began to pursue learning how to answer the Lord’s calling on my life to be a mother. I attended parenting classes left and right, searching the scriptures and through wanting to share the love that I had found, I became involved in the Single Parents Ministry. Praying the Lord would help me overcome my unbelief; My car crashed right after church the following day. The fact that he saved me from injury was a loud answer! The next day our Single Parent Ministry started. Astonishingly, I was there to do my part. One day later, I was not able to lift my head off my pillow. The Doctor said I should have been paralyzed and then I knew why the Lord gave me a scripture in the hospital, it said “Rise and shine for your light has come. The glory of the Lord rises upon you.” The verse is in Isaiah, as is, the rest of my life’s focus, starting with a good friend discipling me. She gave me: The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Isaiah 58:11 This specific Chapter of Isaiah has been and continues to be my focus after 7 years. In May of 2000, I felt led to quit my job of 10 1/2 years at Costco and work at a Christian Preschool. While attending the single mother’s ministry at a different church, I met Kay, never realizing she directed the preschool. How good is God? I went for my interview and we laughed as we already knew each other (that’s just how God is). She gave me a job and helped me grow spiritually. She even worked around my school schedule as I felt led to pursue my Social Work degree. Through my BSW I focused on what I believe the Lord has laid out for me as a road map for life…Isaiah 58. I thank God so much that I had and still have that scripture to hold onto or I might not have finished. Especially, since during the last Semester of my degree in 2003, the condo I was renting filled up with mold and both my son and I became extremely sick. Do you believe this? We found a place in 2-weeks to move into and it was absolutely better than what we had and the neighbors even came to help us move in. Of course we found out that their son had the same name as mine and they were actually from the same church! See, God is sooo good! Even more good news is that the Lord had interested me in taking sign language classes for the last three semesters of my BSW and that allowed me to continue worshiping the Lord while my voice recovered from the mold. What would I do without ASL?!!! 6 months after the move I realized that in order to continue living in San Diego I would need a better job or better education. I then began the application process for the MSW program at SDSU. I continued to practice my signing skills and my love for the people and the language grew. I began praying that if it was possible that the Lord could combine counseling, sign language and children in the same job then sign me up! He took me up on it and I began my internship counseling children that were deaf or hard of hearing. Yipppeeee! It really happened! I seriously had no idea that this job existed. Now with the MSW the Lord has allowed me to obtain a position continuing in that same line of work. This didn’t come easy. I waited much longer than anticipated for this job and actually took another job for a couple of days working at a shelter. I believe that the Lord was showing me that we can make choices that glorify Him and sometimes there really are two or more choices. Either way I ended up working with believers doing what the Lord has equipped me to do for now. I’m continuing to work toward my LCSW and ASL Interpreting Certificate and keeping my eyes open…