My Testimony   I came to a personal knowledge of Christ when I was six years old. My parents were both Christians, having been saved at young ages, but had not always been faithful in church attendance. Once I was born they determined that I should be raised in church, and began attending when I was only a few weeks old. At a very early age I had an extensive knowledge of Bible stories. My mother told me of a time when we had gone to a Christian book store. They had pictures of Bible stories all around the walls. I was taking my father around to each one, telling him which stories they were. My mother was in the stacks looking at books, and she could hear two ladies an aisle over expressing amazement that I knew all those stories at a young age. It wasn't really so amazing. When I was two years old my mother had taken me to Vacation Bible School for a week. The next Monday I wanted to know when we were going back. Mom seized that opportunity and got old Sunday School literature from our church and began teaching me at home. I am ever thankful for my mother and her love and dedication of teaching the Bible to me and to other children.   At the age of 8, I was watching a slide presentation of a dear evangelist friend in church. It was on a visit to a deaf missionary school in Jamaica. I was sincerely touched by this and had a tremendous desire to go there and work at the school. You may think an 8 year old is too young to understand or make that kind of decision, but I wasn't and my decision was a true conviction. I began telling people that I wanted to be a missionary. An older lady in the church asked my mother how she could let me talk like that or even think of going off to a foreign field. My mother told her that I didn't belong to her or my father, I belonged to the Lord and I would do what He would have me to do. This took a tremendous amount of faith, courage and insight from my mother, and I praise God that she passed it along to me. As I went through school I determined that I would attend Appalachian Bible College in Bradley, WV and study missions.   At the age of 16, however, I received a new calling, which I thought was so different from the first. During a lecture by a Christian State Trooper about drugs, alcohol and teen pregnancy I suddenly became so burdened for the hundreds of teens out in the world who did not know Christ and who despaired of life. I wanted to be able to reach out to them and let them know there were other options. I wanted to help young girls who were pregnant understand their options and help them not make the biggest mistake of their lives and have an abortion. It was at this point that I decided to study Bible Family Counseling as well.   During the summers of '87, '88, and '89 I served as a Child Evangelism Fellowship Summer Missionary, teaching backyard Five Day Clubs to community children. I enjoyed it a lot. In August of '89 I found a job at a Christian day care and worked there my senior year of high school. I graduated June 1990 and prepared to go to ABC that Fall.   My church had supported ABC for as long as I could remember, and we had attended numerous training seminars held by the college. Going to school there was like coming home. In school I had pretty much been an outcast with only a handful of friends who did not live near me. At ABC I soon found that I fit in and had many friends. It was here that I met one of my dearest friends, who has been a missionary to France and is now on a church planting team in Poland, as well as my future husband. I immediately became involved in the campus puppet team. I had had experience with puppets at my church and wanted to learn more about the ministry. I was also introduced to the ministry of AWANA at the local church I attended and soon became a leader. The experiences I enjoyed most were the puppet ministry and teaching the 5th and 6th Guard AWANA girls.   My father died of cancer a month after I returned home from my freshman year at ABC. It was an extremely difficult and painful time for me. My father and I had been very close. I depended on his Biblical knowledge, leadership and his approval. I now had to strike out on my own.   I graduated from ABC in May 1994 with a BA in Bible and Theology with a concentration in Bible Family Counseling. The next day I left with a group of fellow students to go on a missions trip with Biblical Ministries Worldwide to Luxembourg, England and Scotland. If you ever have the opportunity to go on a missions trip, DO IT!! This revived my heart for missions, and I began considering returning to Luxembourg as a missionary.   I returned to ABC to serve as the Secretary to the Registrar and Dean of Students (it was the same person) for one year. I had not been ready to leave ABC, mostly because there was a young man I had become interested in and it seemed that the relationship would grow. Soon into that year, however, things changed dramatically and it was obvious that he didn't want things to become more serious. I was deeply hurt and disappointed. I had pretty much come to the conclusion that if I didn't find someone here, I wouldn't find anyone. There were no prospects at home. So I began praying. I told the Lord that I let go of the whole situation and I would leave it up to Him to bring into my life the man He would have me marry. If I was not to marry, then I asked Him to help me find the contentment to go through life alone. Literally weeks later I got a letter from my future husband. We had met at ABC four years before, but due to personal difficulties he had left school and moved away.  I had written to him and sent him cards, but never heard from him, so I quit. Now he had written to me three years later! After a few months of corresponding, phone calls (expensive -- just ask my mom!) and visits, not to mention coming to grips with the new friendship that was developing, we began dating. Later I found out that he wrote to me after finding one of the Christmas cards I had sent him. He found it about the same time I had been praying about my future husband and turning everything over to God. We were married in April 1996.     Realistically, now that I am married with a family, I will probably not end up on the foreign mission field or continue my education to receive a masters in Counseling. After looking at the state of the church in America today, it is just as great a mission field as the jungles, tribes and communist countries scattered across the globe. England was once the greatest force in world missions, and now it is one of the greatest mission fields. From what I see, America is headed in this same direction. I still strongly support foreign missions, but we need to do a lot of work here at home.  I've come to realize that my burden and call in life is not necessarily to go to a mission field, but to help people where I'm at.   The idea for Virtuous Women came in the summer of 1998 when I put together an inspirational booklet for a friend going through a difficult time. The booklet met with such enthusiastic response that I started looking into making more. I realized that this could be God's way of using my talents for His glory and the edification of others.   My goal is to teach women to teach and train other women what the Bible says about their role in the church, society and their own homes, how to search out the Scriptures and yield themselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in order to find answers to questions they will be faced with in the future in order to bring glory to God, our Father.   My husband and I seek to be in professional ministry together discipling and counseling those in the local church community.  Currently we write for the ezine, Sacred Intimacy, an online publication devoted to discipline Christians to greater intimacy with Christ.     My Life Verse -- Why it May Change   Life is lived in stages. We are first a baby, then a toddler, preschooler, kindergartener, gradeschooler, adolescent, then an adult. Adulthood has stages: young adult, middle age and senior citizen But we go through stages in our lives that aren't so obvious, and those are determined by experiences and spiritual growth. At different times in our lives we have different needs and focuses. That's why a life verse may change. That's why mine has.   When I was in junior high and high school I used Psalm 109:23 as my life's verse. "I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust." The only reason I can give is that it sounded lonely and melancholy, which is how I felt during this time. I didn't have many friends, and those I did have lived away from me and had closer friends. I wasn't involved in anything at school because most activities interferred with Church activities. I wasn't interested in school much anyway.   When I went to college, my attitude began to change. I seemed to fit in better, though still considered a bit 'eccentric,' and had more friends. Then at the end of my first year my father died. It was at this point that I found Deuteronomy 31:8, "And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed." It was a comfort and a support to me. Recently, as my husband and I have been starting a business, a dear friend and former professor of ours sent it to us as an encouragement. So even if you have moved on from a particular verse, it can return to you later in life and be even more meaningful.   As I graduated and started looking to my future, I chose Acts 20:24 because a lifetime of service to God was what I truly desired. As I continue on my life's journey it serves as a challenge and an exhortation.   When choosing a life's verse, make sure it clearly states your heart's desire, and that it is spoken directly from your commitment to God. He will hold you to it.   "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."

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