I was saved at the age of seventeen while visiting my brother at Bible college.

At that time I knew I was not on my way to heaven if I were to die. The thought of getting on the plane to go back home scared me. There were many people praying for me that week that I would be saved.

The last night of visiting my brother God was really working in my heart and I got saved that night. As soon as I prayed and asked God to be my Savior, I felt such a relief and burden lifted. Now I knew where I would go if I died (to Heaven) and I had the peace of God and wanted to tell others all about it.

I went home excited and told all my friends how I had been saved. I shared with them how they could be saved also. They knew I had changed and wondered what had happened to me.

Although I was now saved, I knew very little about the Bible. As I began to read it, God showed me new things. I now felt guilty when I sinned and when I said things that did not honor God.

I tried to continue in the same life of sin - doing what all my unsaved friends were doing - but I felt very guilty and convicted doing those things I used to do without shame. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17 "If any man be in Christ .... old things are passed away behold all things are become new."

Little by little God was changing me. As I grew in one area, God would show me something else to change in my life.

That fall I went away to a secular college. As God worked in my heart He brought a preacher from a nearby Baptist church into my life. My roommate and I started attending church and I was baptized a few months later.

The Christmas after I was saved I surrendered to God to do whatever God wanted. I felt God wanted me to go to Bible college. The next year I started Bible college and finished with a degree in elementary education (1996).

While in college I surrendered to foreign missions if that is what God wanted me to do. God used Romans 15:20-21 to show me that He wanted me to be a missionary. When Michael and I started getting to know one another I found out God had used those same verses to direct him to foreign missions.

I am so thankful for God saving me and giving me a new life.  Although I have faced some trials and difficulties, God has given me grace, strength and comfort. Truly God's way "is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried: He is a buckler to all those that trust in Him" (Psalm 18:30).