Birthday: August 14
Hometown: Sebring, Florida
Prayer Request: Pray for financial support in raising for Siberia, and that the Lord will speak to me about where I should do my internship.
Personal Testimony: I was basically raised in a church. My dad was a pastor’s kid growing up. My mother was not as a pastors kid but defiantly had family that was very involved in church. I grew up in the same area as my mother and in the same church. My parents were both youth pastors. We went to the church of the brethren. Like most kids, I was always at church and constantly hearing about the Word of God. My parents quit being youth pastors in 2000. Later that year, we went to a grace brethren church. My family grew so much while we were there. It was there that I heard the Gospel; this was an entirely new concept to me at the time. So I accepted the Lord; and again we were involved in the church and I was always there. About the time of 8th grade I really started dealing with some depression. I pretty much stopped believing in God even though I told no one. I started cutting myself a lot. I also planned my own suicide every chance I got. Well, high school came around and everything only got worse. I was fighting with my parents all the time. I became really apathetic to everything around me. That was when I really felt I needed something else in my life, but didn’t act upon it. At a time when I was feeling so alone, my youth pastor, Hunter, started hanging out with me. The fact that anyone at my youth group wanted to do anything with me was shocking. Around the end of freshman year some of the “cool kids” of my youth invited me to a big Christian rock festival in Orlando called “Cornerstone Florida.” This simple act was like them reaching out a hand to me in love. But the next week I had finally had it. I was going to kill myself. I had a plan and nothing was going to stop me. But when I got home from school, Hunter called me and asked me if I wanted to spend the night at his house and watch Braveheart, I said yes. To make a long story short, we woke up to the mother running around screaming “THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!” The ceiling was blazing. I missed the air conditioner almost crushing me by a couple feet. When the firemen arrived, they told us they have never seen a fire like this where people actually survived. It was at that moment that it finally hit me. I finally understood that God loved me. That night, I actually felt right with God and I rededicated my life to the Lord. My struggles with depression and loneliness didn’t stop. Neither did any of the other things I was struggling with at the time. But what I gained from this rededication was hope: a hope that I had a higher calling. Two years after the fire, the same youth pastor told me about Teen Missions. So I went on the Philippines team last year. And that’s when the Lord called me to BMW. A verse that has always been close to me is Psalms 34:18, which says “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted, and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Even as we speak I am struggling, but the Lord is close to me in times of sorrow and keeps me moving. I grow a lot more every time I hit rock bottom.
