I went to a Lutheran day care until I was four. For three years, my family didn’t attend any kind of church, mostly due to general laziness. When I turned seven, we started going to a Methodist church that my neighbors had gone to before they moved. We were very off and on, and I was somewhat anti-social, so I didn’t really like it there.
In the sixth grade, I made a friend by the name of Luke. He had a twin sister that I kind of had a crush on, and they were both kind of nerdy, just like me. I started going to see them. On a summer trip during the seventh grade, I got my first glimpse of God. I don’t know if it was the speaker or just the spiritual high that comes from those trips, but I felt something.
I got confirmed in the Methodist church in eighth grade. At that point I was sort of an apathetic deist, but I did everything so that my family would be happy. For the first half of high school, I went to church mostly to see my friends. I went on trips, discovered my talent for building, and started doing as much mission work as I could. Not because it furthered the kingdom, but because building made me happy.
It was on one of these mission trips that I found myself the summer before Junior year. I had been through a tough first breakup not long earlier, and I was depressed. I pulle my youth pastor, Ron, aside and started pouring out my pained thoughts. He was the only staff member in the church I liked. He prayed over me after we talked a while, and that night as I sat in bed in the dark in Memphis, so far from my Texas home, the speaker’s words struck a chord in my heart, and I accepted Christ. The next evening I professed it, truly meaning it for the first time.
Now, as I graduate high school, I plan to go to college, go on a one or two year long mission trip to put my gift of building to good work, and when I return home, I’m going to seminary. I want to be able to change lives like Ron and the preacher on that trip changed mine.
