Our Testimonies

Cameron

I grew up not knowing Jesus and only went to church every once in a while, on holidays. Unfortunately, I was exposed to a lot of things at a very young age due to the people I surrounded myself with.

By the time I was 12 years old, I was addicted to pornography, vaping daily, smoking weed, and drinking. It started out as the fun thing to do because I thought that's what the cool kids did, but it quickly turned into s coping mechanism for anxiety. I lived this way, trying to fill the hole in my heart that we all have with sex, substances, and people, till I was around the age of 16.

At this point I had started hanging out with this really awesome and beautiful girl named Mina. She was a good influence on me, and I decided to quit doing all the substances for about 9 months. During this time, I replaced doing substance with learning and reading. This was the first time in my life that I cracked open the Word of God. Not because I was seeking God, but because I was seeking knowledge for myself.

After those 9 months was up, I went right back to my old habits and on top of that was hiding all of my activities from Mina. Through all of this, I had struggled with homosexuality, and I was in the most confusing and frustrating point in my whole life. Business wasn't working out, I was depressed, my relationship was falling apart, so all I could think to do was numb myself with all the same things that had never worked in the past. You could say that I was at a low spot, and you would be right, but that is what was necessary to humble myself and realize that after all this time I was trying to find fulfillment in things that were never going to fill me.

So, I opened my bible and I talked with the Lord. He asked me to turn from my ways that were profit to no one and follow Him, so that's what I did. The Lord has truly brought me deliverance and freedom from all of the darkness that surrounded my life. He mended my relationship back together, filled me with life, and gave me joy, hope, and purpose. I was made a new creation at that moment, and I was filled with the Holy Ghost. I know now that there is no life without Jesus. There are only people trying to find life in something that doesn't have it. Life is not something, it's someone, and His name is Jesus.

Mina

Like Cameron, I didn't grow up going to church. I always thought there had to be a bigger meaning to life, but I just didn't know what it was. I grew up in a large family with divorced parents and six siblings. I didn't receive the love I needed growing up; my dad was absent, and my mom was kept busy with all of my siblings. Many things happened during my childhood that caused me a great deal of anxiety and fear. My sisters were my best friends, and they were the ones who eased that anxiety and gave me comfort. 

However, when I was around 15, they all moved out one by one, and I was left alone with that anxiety. It caused me to spiral deeply into a depression. I had just moved from my hometown, and it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, so I was completely isolated. I began to fill that deep void with pornography, a focus on vanity, and universal religious practices like tarot card readings, manifestation, and astral projecting. I was failing school online because my anxiety was so severe that I couldn’t force myself to focus on anything. On top of that, I would lie awake every night with so much fear that I couldn't sleep or eat. No one I spoke to took it seriously, so the only thing I felt I could resort to was suicide. It felt like I was standing still while everyone else’s lives were happily passing me by. Time had stopped for me.

I began researching the best way to take my life painlessly because I just wanted the pain to stop. One night, I remember calling out to God in my room. I said, "God, if you're real, then why do I feel this way?" This was the first time I ever prayed or called on the name of Jesus. Shortly after, my mom decided it was best for me to go to school in person. School was really hard for me; I was so anxious. The only thing I focused on was "being normal." I wanted to fit in and wanted guys to like me, so I dressed in a way I thought they would. One of the first friends God put in my life there was a follower of Jesus who introduced me to the Bible and would talk about God with me. I didn't listen much and just kept going on as I was.

Around a year or so later, I received a text about hanging out with Cameron, whom I had known from my old school. I thought, "Hey, why not?" During this time, I actually received a vision from God—though I didn't know it then and just thought it was my imagination. The vision was of Cam and me in the shower together, married, in our own place. I thought, "Okay, that's weird, Mina; why did you just think about that?"

We ended up hanging out and started dating for a few years. We did all the worldly things—partying, vaping, and having sex. I was very dependent on Cam to fill that void in me, and I felt like I had finally found what I had been searching for. Fast forward a little later, I became friends with new girls, and one of them heavily poured into me regarding the things of God. She played only worship music in the car and showed me Christian podcasts; she is the reason I bought my first Bible. It was senior year, and I was finally almost done with school, grinding to finish all my work. My relationship started to feel like it was going to shambles. I remember telling my friend, "I haven't really read my Bible yet, but I want to do it once I have everything figured out in my life." She quoted Mark 2:17 back to me: "It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners."

Over the course of the next year, while I was in cosmetology school, something in me flipped. The Lord started to slowly show me His love for me, and I started to pursue a relationship with Him more. I had a heavy burden on my heart that the only thing that would salvage the mess of my relationship with Cam was if we started going to church. God started to do something in us. It was like I was no longer 15 and standing still; I was alive for the first time in my life. I was in the midst of everyone jumping for joy, filled with the Holy Spirit.

Cam and I got baptized together. We found a young adults' Bible study and met the most amazing people. I rekindled friendships with those two girls, and Jesus has performed a miracle in that as well. That year, Cam and I felt the conviction to stop having sex outside of marriage, but we really struggled. God gave me a prophetic dream of three positive pregnancy tests, and at the end of the dream, He said, "I am going to use this for my Glory." Scared out of my mind when I woke up, I brushed it off as just being in my head. Weeks later, the dream came true down to every moment I had dreamt, and I ended up pregnant.

During this pregnancy, I started to make my identity about becoming a mom and stopped reading my Bible and pursuing God as much. I then had two more prophetic dreams. In one, I was on the way to a Christian women’s event, praying in the car and talking to God: "I feel like this is going to be awkward, and I’m not going to make any friends. But God, make my identity rooted so deeply in You that it won't matter to me." In the second, I was sitting in a coffee shop with one of my best friends holding a devotional called God Our Home by Katie Noble. I thought these were just crazy, vivid pregnancy dreams and wrote them off to my imagination as well.

A couple of months later, Cam and I received news that I had a miscarriage. I was heartbroken. The thing that was filling my void was gone. What was I going to do? Well, later on, those dreams I had dreamt came true. I wanted to know what God was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I opened that book that I read all about the fall of Adam and Eve—how we were meant to live life in communion with God. I learned that the void didn't mean there was something wrong with us, but that it was there for our Heavenly Father to fill. God was showing me that I had been filling that void all my life with sex, substances, self-image, and relationships, when He was the one who wanted to fill it for me.

This was a breakthrough for me. I truly let God in fully. Fast forward to now: I’m 20, married to Cam, and we are in our own home together. The other day, we were in the shower together, and that vision I saw when I was 15 came to life before my eyes. The first thing I thought was, "Wow, God really has washed us clean." The Lord was always there. Even though I didn't receive immediate break through when I was 15 calling out to him. He was there aligning my life to find him and showing glimpses of how it was going to happen.