What God Has Done in My Life

When I entered high school, my parents enrolled me in a private school.
Being raised in public school, and having a secure social group in that realm, you could say I was nothing short of devastated.
But, as it turns out, like every time, God had a project that he was forming in my life. It wasn't until recently that he revealed all that he had done in my life and it BLEW MY MIND, so here is my story:

I spent my first two years of high school at private school; I was being challenged, I was growing in my faith, building friendships with other Christians, and slowly becoming two faced.
What more could I ask for, right?

When Sophomore year ended, the school had to close and as you can imagine, I was wrecked. I had gotten so accustomed to this simple, warm, complacent-Christian lifestyle of mine where I wouldn't have to do much in my faith because everyone at my school already knew about God. It was simple and I loved it, which was why it was so alarming when I discovered that I would be going back to public school.

During the summer before my Junior Year I spent roughly seven weeks volunteering at a kids camp. To give you some background information : I hated kids. Like, a lot. When I arrived at this camp somehow during all the paperwork it had managed to slip past me that I would be spending my entire Summer working with kids and working with people who loved kids more than anything. You can imagine how uncomfortable I felt and fortunately through a lot of tears and guidance, God transformed my heart towards kids that summer. He showed me his heart for them, and exposed me to how selfish I was being. It was a slap in the face, but honestly, sometimes a slap in the face is the one thing that can effectively motivate change in my life.

After this radical summer, I was officially plunged into the complexity of changing schools again (actually, it wasn't that hard and if you're considering doing part-time college during high school, DO IT). I joined the Running Start program (taking community college classes and getting high school and college credit simultaneously) because I was a brat and wanted to avoid spending as much time as possible in public school. I was prideful and had a superiority complex to put it mildly; my mom knows all too well how delightful I was.

In my first quarter at college God placed two of my closest friends from middle school in my English class. I had no clue that being reunited with these friends would completely remodel my walk with Christ.

 One of them invited me to go to her church on a Wednesday and to be polite I decided to give it a go. I went once and knew that I needed to stay. After a while, I persuaded my parents to let me leave the church I had been born into and pursue God on my own at this other church. When I say "persuaded" I mean, I begged and they finally said, "yes". They knew exactly what I was doing, my parents are very intelligent.

One month after I started attending Faith Center I heard about a missions trip that they let youth kids go on and I felt gravitated to come to the meeting and hear about it. I had never been on a missions trip (or out of the country for that matter) and my parents were shocked when I asked to go to Asia with people whom they had hardly met. It was really neat coming home and telling them that I had a desire to go to the Philippines for two weeks with people I had only known for two months. They were nothing short of baffled that I even had the audacity to ask, but they prayed about it and actually said yes.

Seven months, one passport, and hundreds of blessings that turned into $2,000 later, I was on a thirty hour trip to Asia.
This missions trip rocked my world to say the least. I saw God move in ways that I had only ever read about.

I have been going to Faith Center Church for one year and eight months and God has revolutionized in my life what it means to have a relationship with him.

If all of these things in my life that felt really painful and wrong at the time had not have happened, then I would have never been introduced to Faith Center, or gone to the Philippines, or be writing this blog.

God has truly shown me in my life what Proverbs 3:5-6 means : Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

Making decisions based on my own understanding would have given me a first class ticket to nowhere.

Thank you abundantly to everyone who has contributed to getting me to where I am, and thanks to all the people who are supporting me and helping me get to where I will go.