I wasn’t raised in a Christian family, and as a kid I never really went to real church. Every once in a while I may have hone with my grandparents, and for about a year they paid for my sisters and I to go to a kid’s church. You know, the kind where a bus picks you up at your house, you go to a Sunday school, then you have a pizza party on the way back. I never really learned too much about God, I just went for the food. Then, we stopped going to that, and I didn’t step into a church for years. When I was twelve, my mom had to go into the hospital, because of two brain aneurysms. For those of you who don’t know what that is, it is when an artery vessel widens and swells, kind of like when you put a bicycle inner tube that has a hole into a bucket of water. And if one of these aneurysms explode, you’ll die instantly. So she had two of them, one on each side of her brain, and they were touching her brain, and later on they also found eight blood clots around her brain. She went through surgery, and fell into a coma. She was in that coma for four months and then she died when I was thirteen, on May 4, 1999. So of course I felt completely empty inside, and had no idea what there was to live for.

Finally, I decided to search for something. Convenient enough for me, two weeks before my mom died, Cornerstone Presbyterian was built right across the street, maybe 150 yards away, so I decided to go one Sunday. I got a lot of attention from people, and I felt good about myself, so I started to go every Sunday, just to get attention. They had a little Christian concert there one night, I went, and the band had opened the floor for people to get saved. Everyone else was doing it, so I went up and played along, and just said the words. I had no meaning behind it.

Then my freshman year, I was riding the late bus, and I made both the best and worst mistake of my life. I befriended Kenneth Loux. If any of you know Ken, which I’m sure you do, you know that he is one of those people you should only take in small doses. Anyway, he invited me to come to Ground Zero somewhere around summertime. So I said, “sure, why not, you know what else I am going to do to have fun.” I had expected to come and hang out with Ken, but Ken left me and did his own thing, so I had no choice but to talk to other people. As I kept coming to Ground Zero, I realized that I need something more in y life, I just didn’t know what. I decided to search for something. I tried many different things, even girls. Up until two or three month ago, I thought that girls were all I needed, but that didn’t work. Not only did I have my heart broken, but I also had anti-dating people jumping down my throat, like Christine O’Connor and Patti Luis. So I somewhat listened to Christine and Patti, and didn’t revolve my life around girls. I still dated, but didn’t make it everything. I wanted to see If God was right for me, so I wanted to learn more about it and joined a couple of small groups, like Foundations and a Bible study at my church. Naturally, I became pretty knowledgeable about the bible and God, I even wrote an English paper about homosexuality and used Bible verses as my main focus. But even with all that knowledge, I still doubted that God was right for me. My doubts mainly kicked in the week before the Elevate retreat. I was in Foundations, and we talked about testimonies., and having to write one. I really felt like I had nothing to write, so I asked about that. We must have spent an hour as a group trying to figure out what I could write about. After that hour, it was time to go and Patti had talked to me some more. We found out that I wasn’t a Christian, but supposedly that God wanted me, according to Patti. So, I decided to gibe it one last try, and I went on the last Elevate retreat.

On Friday night, Pastor Mike told us to write down what we wanted to sacrifice and we all went out to a fire to burn it. I didn’t write anything down, and I stood on the outside of the fire ring against a tree. I was standing there, and Rob Cochran came up tome and started to talk to me. All he said was one thing that I will never forget. He said, “you have all the knowledge of God and the Bible, but are you ready to take that step of faith?” Those few words made me think, and not even five minutes later, I was in that fire circle praying wand asking, no, begging, for salvation. So that was when I was saved and that following Saturday night at the service, the only thing I remember was being on my knees, crying and praying. I couldn’t tell you what I prayed about, because I honestly don’t remember.

Ever since then, I have been praying frequently, reading my Bible, and I even witnessed to a couple of kids when I was in Pittsburgh the next three days after the trip. Now I know that I have truly found what I am looking for, and all I have to do now is grow in God’s grace.