I grew up going to church with my grandma every single Sunday until about high school.  I understood a little bit of what was being said, but not as much as I would have liked.  Then I lost my aunt and soon after my brother and it felt like when I needed someone the most they were not there for me.  My best friend and I went to church together and yet when I went through these tragedies she was not there for me.  And I began to wonder if God was good then why would he let me go through this alone.  Life kept getting worse.  This caused me to think why should I even continue to believe if nothing is happening.  At times I thought about going back to church, but whenever something bad happened I decided to not go back.  About 15 years later, after meeting Bill we began to talk about going to church.  Bill wanted to find a church, but I was afraid.  At that time my weird neighbors kept inviting us to barbecues and breakfasts and thought who in the world would do that.  For some reason we decided to go one day.  And we realized they were not as weird as we thought.  Then one day we got a bad snow storm and Bill got his snowblower and blew out the block.  From there they blessed us with a gift card and that open us up to coming to missional community.  After attending I began to see how they interacted with people.  I began to learn about the Bible and realize that God does not leave us.  We might not know why he does what he does, but he has a plan, maybe not what I wanted to hear but what he wants to do.  I started to see where my sin was and how I didn’t rely on God.  The more I grew in missional community I realized that the way Derek and Alecia cared about people made it so that I wanted to be like that.  I saw that something was missing in my life.  It was at this time I realized we were living in sin by not being married and wanted to fix it.  I wanted to follow Jesus Christ.  As I made that decision, God began to test me.  My grandma died and instead of turning from God I grew closer to him and it gave me peace.  It was hard but better with him.  Then we got married to obey Jesus Christ.  And again life threw me a curveball when my dad died.  And instead of turning from God I trusted him. Since then I have come to realize that my life is not for me but for God.  Today I am getting baptized as a sign of obeying Jesus Christ.