My testimony

For weeks I have been wanting to blog and had some ideas and thoughts formulating in my mind but I've been too occupied with playing Scrabulous on Facebook instead.

Tomorrow morning we are giving our testimonies so that we can become members of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Valleyview. So I decided, why not put that on my blog. . .

I can honestly say, and thankfully so, that I have never really known a life without knowing Christ. I grew up in a Christian home and came to know Him personally as I prayed with my parents after a Christmas Eve service the year I was seven. In grade six I was baptized and accepted into membership of a Mennonite Brethren Church in St. Catharines, Ontario. Following were years of Sunday School, Pioneer Girls, VBS work, youth group, choir and church membership meetings. As a typical teenager, I had times of doubt, where I rededicated myself to God and times where I wondered if I believed what I believed because I knew it to be true or if it were simply a way of life. Time and time again, I was reassured of my decision to accept Christ and follow Him.

After I received Christ, and certainly as I grow older (which is becoming increasingly obvious), I am keenly aware of God’s leading in my life and I realize more and more that God’s purposes are found in even the smallest of events.

After three years of Bible School, Geof and I were married (which is why I am now a converted Westerner). Over the last 22 + years, we have sensed God’s working and leading in our lives.

Through His Word and His people, He reminds me that He is always with me, even in those times when I have questioned His seeming silence. Through a number of unsuccessful pregnancies and then blessing us after 13 years with two beautiful daughters, He teaches me faith in the unseen. Through the experience of severe financial difficulty, He presents me with the challenge to trust Him. Through both good and bad times, He assures me that He is in control and He brings me through tough times, even though the road sometimes seems long. Through His help, I can say with the psalmist in Psalm 68:19, “Praise be to the Lord; to God our Saviour, who daily bears our burdens.” But it wouldn’t be emotionally healthy of me, as we are learning in Sunday School, not to confess I often forget His truths and try to do it on my own.

I could stand here for a long time and tell you all the places God has taken us and brought us from, and most recently about the miraculous course of events that brought us to Valleyview. It was rather a bumpy start and we doubted whether we had really understood God’s direction clearly. By the end of August we were more than ready to leave…

But we thought of the tremendous love and welcome we received from this church family since the day we arrived in July. It was Pastor James who sat and prayed with us one September afternoon and reminded us that there is good in Valleyview.

For Geof and me, an imperative part of our Christian life is to become members of a local church body. And so we stand before you today with that public declaration in mind.

I look forward to being a member of Emmanuel Baptist Church where we can learn from and support one another, where we and our girls can grow spiritually, and where we can have opportunity to serve the Lord together.