United States of America
I met Jesus on a Red Dirt road. This is the title of a story. I didn’t think I’d be writing, let alone living.
It was the year 2018, May to be specific, like all things relating to the Lord, I had no idea what I was in for.
To say I met Jesus may seem bizarre right?? After all, He isn’t even alive anymore. But rest assured, I stand by my statement. I was a kid in church always wondering how all these people were seemingly so into something that I didn’t have any concept for.
To be quite honest, Church seemed to be nothing but a waste of my time.
As I said, it was 2018. It was January and I was residing in Lincoln Nebraska finishing my senior year of college.
I was a mess. My best friend had just gotten pregnant which meant my next nine months were also about to look a lot different. Say goodbye to every trip we had planned, not to mention my major was psychology and pre-physician assistant. Yet I had no dream or desire to actually do hospital work.
So how does any of this relate to Jesus? Spoiler alert, everything is related to Jesus, and I do mean everything, even when we think it isn’t.
I was devastated and had no idea what direction my life was about to take. And then I read a book. It was a book I’d been meaning to read for a decade, yet never got around to it: “Kisses from Katie” by Kate Davis. She was a teenager graduating high school who decided to go to Uganda for a mission trip after graduating high school. Long story short, Katie fell absolutely in love with the country of Uganda and the continent of Africa, and she still resides there to this day.
I may not have known much else if anything at that point in my life, but I knew this much: I was going to Africa over hell or high water. In fact, I made it my personal mission to get over there as soon as I graduated from college.
And I did well, correction, God did. I just said yes.
The night the application closed, I scrolled upon an Instagram post from a nonprofit in Nashville, accepting applicants for a mission trip to Masindi, Uganda. I applied three weeks later, and I was accepted. I couldn’t believe it.
As time drew near , we started doing group calls in preparation for our trip.
Little did I know the very organization that I was going to Uganda with (love + ONE International) was the same organization that helped Katie Davis get her nonprofit up and running.
My mind was blown. How could this be?
Only Jesus. He specializes in stuff like this.
It gets better.
When I actually got to Uganda, it was like heaven on earth.
Like I said, it was where I met the love of my life Jesus!
It was a normal day. Every day starts just the same. This one was no different. I went with my group to a village that day. It was amazing, but a story for another time.
The day in the village wrapped up, and we returned to the main school. It really was a normal afternoon to the common eye, but rest assured, there’s no such thing as common when God’s involved.
The rest of the afternoon I was attacked by kisses, hugs and affection and love. The school kids and I chased each other up and down the red dirt road until those mean adults made us part ways.
I left in a big white van with beautiful ebony-skinned faces and hands chasing me down.
I’d finally felt IT. What do you ask? Love – not the worldly kind or even the kind we receive from our parents or loved ones. It’s a different type of love. It’s heavenly, it’s Holy.
If you haven’t felt this all consuming gut wrenching totally consuming love it’s OK.
I hadn’t either. All you have to do is ask. That’s it. As simple as “God, if you’re real, let me know.”
That was my prayer all those years ago. He isn’t too good to be true. He’s not magical or a genie in a bottle. He’s real, and He’s yearning and waiting for the very day you asked to get to know him.
Believe me it’s an adventure you don’t want to miss.
So be it XOXO
Kristen Ann
United States of America
Never, ever, ever give up on the promises that God has for you!
I had made a decision to follow Christ in college at Duke University after being raised in mostly the Catholic, and later Methodist churches as a child. I was also exposed to pornography at the age of 12 or 13, thus beginning my long journey of addiction. Further wounding came at the age of 17 when I was molested by a male college student while attending a magnet high school on a college university campus in Louisiana. Yet the Lord saw me and blessed me by introducing a beautiful young girl with a heart for His into my life. We met when I was 17 and she was 14. After dating for 5 years, she became not only my wife, but eventually my soul mate, my life partner, and my best friend. Our 31 years of marriage have been tested with many trials— early arguments over money and me being controlling, cold and insensitive. The stresses of having to provide for my wife and first child, who was conceived out of wedlock, while studying endlessly in medical school, manifested itself through relief and escape in my pornography addiction. With each child or each new stressor, my addiction grew deeper. But my relationship with God was also growing. He never turned His back on me, even in the middle of my sin. He allowed my sin to be exposed several times throughout our marriage, and each time He has drawn me closer and closer to Jesus as I surrendered my heart piece by piece to Him.
It wasn’t until August 2023 that I realized I had not completely surrendered my entire heart to Jesus. I was holding back a false sense of control and self-sufficiency. Financial freedom had become an idol to me, so the Lord exposed me once again, this time in a spontaneous act of adultery, which was orchestrated by the enemy to stroke my ego and turn me away from God. Through this extremely painful and shameful trial, as I lay naked and bare before Him, I finally surrendered EVERYTHING to Him—all false sense of control, my money, my marriage, my kids, my house… and more. What transpired was nothing short of a miracle, as He transformed me through His mercy and overwhelming, infinite love. He began comforting me with songs of worship and scripture and imagery. Then, within a few days of my complete surrender, He filled me with the Holy Spirit and a Divine Encounter that I will never, ever forget. I saw the throne room and witnessed the circle dance of the Holy Trinity-Abba Father, Yeshua, and Holy Spirit-all together in the most beautiful setting and light imaginable. For nearly an hour during that encounter, as I wept uncontrollably, I felt the most sublime peace, love, and joy one could ever experience. As tears rolled down my face and the vibrational energy of the Holy Spirit surged through my fingers, my arms, and into my body. I didn’t want it to end! I just wanted to stay there, remain, abide. Just as He calls us to abide in Him—He is the vine, and we are the branches; none can bear fruit without Him. I’ve always known that verse, but now I have a much deeper understanding of it.
Now, filled with the Holy Spirit, as I walk face to face with Jesus day by day, hour by hour, I see that He has much more in store for me than I could ever have planned or imagined.
My wife has chosen to forgive me, and God is restoring our marriage in preparation for our journey with Him to further His Kingdom. The Lord is faithful and committed to honoring His promises to those He calls His children, and my story is overwhelming proof of that.
United States of America
As a young adult with two small girls running from a failed marriage and a chaotic marriage, I ran to Pasadena California, where my college friend had invited me to come stay with her and her son. I did not know the Lord, even though He had introduced Himself to me when I left Chicago. A woman came to my sister’s house, where I was staying after leaving my failed marriage. She came to the door and asked, “Do you know Jesus?” No, I did not. She read some scriptures to me and then gave me her Bible because I didn’t have one. I took that Bible to California.
The Lord led a stranger who worked in the same place I worked to pester me about Jesus and coming to church with her. Off I went with my bible. The miracle was that God had set me up to come to this place, where this friend, whom I could not stand, loved me in action to lead me to Christ by not letting my nasty attitude stop her from talking to me about Jesus. Even though she knew I did not want to hear it. Then she led me to the first church that I ever attended more than once. There I put my hand in my Father’s Hand and became His child and worshipped, praised, was baptized, and served for over 17 years. I have never looked back!
Beatrice Brownridge
United States of America
August 2020; in the middle of a global pandemic, my two younger boys, my husband and I decided to temporarily move to a different area. We all arrived masked up and unaware of what lay ahead. One month and a few days into our arrival, my husband of 19/20 years at the time went back to our home country to work. Little did I know, he would be spending most days, weeks and even months there.
I found myself in this country, another culture, homeschooling, or at least attempting to for the first time in my life. Cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry were all foreign to me, as back home, my housekeeper would cheerfully perform all of these daily, routine tasks. It was her job to do so, and she did with a grateful heart.
Now set in an environment of Resort Living, I found myself alone and uneasy. Drinking would sometimes allow me to enjoy vacuuming and doing laundry. Well, to be honest, not even drinking allowed me to like doing laundry. But the other stuff, cleaning a bathroom or cooking. Slowly the drinking progressed, and nightcaps helped me fall asleep after a long day of taking the boys to school, picking them up, making breakfast, lunch, and dinner as well as packing their lunches.
Fast forward years later, and we are still here. For this new season, it is just my little one and I. My 16-year-old, I knew, would thrive alongside his father and older brother. back in our homeland. Even during my drinking days, I always sought the Lord and a true connection with him. I really did. It was my heart mostly. As my relationship with my husband drifted and became physically, emotionally, and intimately distanced in the past 2 ½ years, I learned to feel seen, valued, desired, and thought of, specifically by a male figure. I am sure this has a lot to do with my biological father-wound. Growing up with an emotionally unavailable father, who was verbally abusive, alcoholic, and drug dependent, I longed to feel accepted for who I actually was and seen. The reason for which I was probably the lead female role of all my high school plays. My father had no choice but to go and SEE his daughter.
Anyways…back to my unmet needs. Today, as I sit here writing, the Lord has removed the obsession to numb my feelings using alcohol. He has sent me a mentor, His dear child and my angel here on earth. I didn’t even know I would need her, or that I would even be here. The battle, this spiritual battle for my soul and my purpose in the Lord, has been so fierce. I mean so fierce that it brings tears to my eyes as I write. But my Lord, my heavenly Father has been so gentle, so patient, so forgiving, so compassionate, so detailed, so present! He has literally sent angels my way, spiritual warriors, Jesus-loving women into my life to see me through. I am eternally grateful.
Shirlz
South Africa
have seen a lifetime of God making what seems impossible, possible in my life.
Taking complexities in our 52-year marriage to a love that has lasted and stood the test of time.
The greatest of all God’s miracles and working in our lives, is the healing of our first-born son, Mark, from a debilitating illness.
In September 2022 he began to experience a slight blur to his right eye, coupled with excruciating pain. After rounds of CT and brain scans, hospitalization and multiple visits to a doctrine of doctors, none could give a conclusive or satisfactory explanation for his intense suffering. By December he was completely blind in the right eye, coupled with excruciating pain.
January 2, he collapsed at home from pain this time to his abdomen. He was readmitted. More tests and scans revealed a large mass on his liver. After three biopsies which revealed no cancer cells, it was presumed his prior melanoma diagnoses had returned, and he was referred to oncology. He would require 6 rounds of immunotherapy but there were no guarantees. So began endless rounds of hospital visitations and fewer answers.
My journal entry for 13 January, read: ” Last night was a disaster. My poor boy’s suffering is off the chart. I need 90,000 South African Rand this morning for his first treatment. All I have is Jesus. He is all I need.”
The struggle for his soul was a bitter one. By evening his body was wracked with pain. The maximum medication had been administered without relief. Unable to sit or lie down his emaciated body hung between the support of his brother and father … As he hung there I thought of Jesus … an image etched in my mind forever. I thought of how Jesus hung on the cross in excruciating pain for my boy … his only hope. I’d only just read: “I and the Father are One and We have come to bring salvation to this soul. He was bought at a high price, the precious blood of Christ. Stand back Satan, this soul is mine.” Hope welled up in my heart knowing the Father and the Son had come to draw my boy to salvation. Jesus draws a line in the sand that Satan may not cross, because of what Christ did on the cross – with power and authority He could claim my boy back and bring him to salvation … and He did!!!
By evening the money was paid and the precious life-giving treatment was on its way. As the sun was setting on the Sabbath, Marks best friend and a pastor friend arrived at the hospital to anoint him. Since then we’ve watched with amazement and gratitude the miracle of God’s saving grace and answer to a mothers prayer unfold, as Mark gains strength and grows in Grace. There’s nothing too hard for God. All power in heaven and earth has been given Him … united with His Father they do battle for the souls of men and woman. All we need to do is reach out in faith and touch Him.
On the 15th April he recommitted his life to God in baptism.
There’s so much more…God is enough ❤️
Olivia Maritz
