Before you begin, let me say that most of this story is ficticious.  It is a story that wrote itself one character at a time, starting somewhere around the middle, blooming out from there.  It begs me ask myself, each time I read through these testimonies, "who am I sharing Christ with?  Who am I linking up with?  I don't want to miss out on this!"

My name’s Evelyn Brouer.

I was married in 1901 to a handsome Dutchman in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Both our parents were immigrants and we came from large families. We ourselves had five sons. The oldest of them was Robert. I can’t fathom what made us have more children after him, even though we’d wanted a large family.

You see Robert was awful colicky. I don’t think I slept the first year of his life. There were only a few things that could calm the child. Nursing, of course, his favorite rattle, long walks in his pram, and listening to me read the Bible. He’d sit still and calm as long as I read. Can you believe in that first year of his life, I read the entire Bible aloud to him. Genesis to Revelation. My husband would come home and find us reading, in Exodus, Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel, Haggai, Proverbs, Psalms, Matthew, Ephesians… “You say the child has colic, I say Robert was just crying out to hear the Word of God.”

Watching him grow up was like watching a miracle take place. As though the Word of God had taken root in his young life. He hungered to hear it, to study it, to share it. Every time I hear him preach now, I think back to the hours of reading we did that first year, and how his infant fits would cease.

George is the name.

After my Father left during The Depression, my mom and I barely held things together by working odd jobs and taking most of our meals at the church. We helped to serve those less fortunate than ourselves and then got a serving each day as well. It got us through.

What really got us through though, was what Pastor Brouer had to say each meal. Every day, after he blessed the food, ole Brother Robert would tell all those hungry men and women, boys and girls, grandmas and grandpas how Jesus was the bread of Heaven and the living water. He said that people who eat regular food and drink regular water just get hungry again, but people who feast on God’s Word are satisfied with eternal gifts.

By the time I heard that message 100 times I could give the sermon myself, and so I did. You see, I believed it. The truth that God’s love was enough to satisfy the hungriest soul became my bread, and I told my mom that I was going to tell everyone I met. We didn’t have the money ever to send me to Bible School, I hadn’t even finished my primary schooling before going to work as a plumber. But everywhere I went in my job I felt God nudge me, as if saying, “Here’s another hungry, thirsty person for you, George! They need the bread of life.”

The Depression’s been over most of my life now, but the need for food, (good hot, soul-satisfying food), is as needed now as ever.

Hi, I’m Joe.

I’m a family man mostly, not very handy around the house, but I always made enough money to hire help when something broke. One day, many years ago, (let’s see it was 1948 and my daughter Nancy was just turned two), well on that day I’d hired a man to come in and do some work on my front bathroom. The man’s name was George.

Well, after George did his job he asked if he could share with me something that was important to him. I thought it was a strange request but he was a friendly fella and I was curious. Turns out, this young man was a Christian and felt led to tell me how I could have a relationship with God too. He said that God sent his Son Jesus to earth to live a perfect life because I couldn’t. He said that when Jesus died on the cross He wasn’t dying for His sins, He was dying for mine. And all I had to do was believe He did that for me so that I could be forgiven.

Now, I knew I’d sinned. I didn’t need this young man to convince me of that. I’d been to war and back by 1948 and now I was raising a family and knew I needed help. My wife knew we needed help too, but neither of us knew much about Jesus. By the time George and I finished talking, the sun had gone down. He gave me the name and address of his church and two days later my wife dressed up our little girl in her prettiest dress, and I took us all to church. Nancy doesn’t remember our family before we were church-going folks. Boy did she love her Sunday school classes! She took to Jesus real natural-like. All her teachers said so. I think it was in hearing her tell us her Sunday school lessons each week where I started to understand those things I’d been hearing from the pulpit. Took my child to make me get it though.

Hello, my name is Nancy.

I grew up in the church. Always loved helping in the nursery, once I was old enough. I went to College for a year or two after high school to be a teacher, but all I really wanted was a family. When I met and married Jim we started a family right away and I didn’t think about teaching again.

I’ve spent the majority of my life taking care of my family now. Raising them was everything to me. My home’s still set up for children, even though my youngest child just married a sweet boy and moved to Florida for his job. But my home looks like I have little ones over every day. The cupboard with the puzzles and games still pops open slightly. It’s just that full.

I have four grandchildren nearby; three grandsons and one granddaughter… but it’s not a full time job the way it was when my kids were young. Not that I’d have the energy for that now. My husband is still working, but we know that retirement is coming sometime soon and there should be money enough for us and possibly some traveling. And I still love to cook and keep the house and have friends over for dinner, and go to Tuesday morning Bible Study with my old gang. You see, I still stay very busy. But it’s not been easy, this transition… for a number of years now.

I’m not a full-time mom anymore. What I always felt was my personal calling in life is over. I don’t have a career… So what am I? I wonder if God has something special for me to do in this Season of my life. Is there something He’s planned for me to do? I don’t want to miss it, because I want it to count. My life, that is… I want it to count. I feel like raising my children counted.

Recently I had a thought, though I haven’t done anything about it yet. I’ve been thinking of helping at our churches inner-city tutoring program. Like I said, there was a time I wanted to be a teacher and I always loved helping my kids with their schoolwork. I’m thinking of signing up to teach English as a second language to Spanish speaking women. Just once a week. I know it won’t fill up all of my time, but it seems like a good place to start.

Hola, me llamo es Ilma.

Hello, my name es Ilma… is Ilma. I come from Mexico City and live with my Sister’s family in Houston, Texas. I learned to speak English on Tuesday morning with Nancy. She teach me to speak English and she teach me also about Jesus. I knew about him before on the cross, we all wear crosses and pray to him and to Mary. But I did never know that He is alive and that He calls out to me to follow Him.

I have exciting hope now. He no longer is on the cross. You see, I don’t wear a crucifix anymore. My cross is empty. I speak Spanish to my family about what Nancy has taught me, and I read my Bible (en Espanol.) I want one day to see I teach another about Jesus, like Nancy teach me about Jesus. I want that, very much. But today I just pray for the family I work for. Their children do not know Jesus. Maybe one day I will tell them, and they can have this happy hope too.

Hello, my name’s Afshin.

I was raised in a Muslim home in Houston, Texas. I never went looking for Jesus, but it seems to me that God came looking for me. Not directly, necessarily, but He had a plan no doubt. It’s too obvious that He had a plan to get ahold of me.

I must have been about 10 when our housekeeper, Ilma, left our family. She’d been with us for years, and I remember her crying when she said goodbye. She gave me a Bible that day, which I thought was strange since we were Muslim, but I put it in my closet.

About 8 years later, when I was packing for College, I found that Bible. And I read it during my freshman year. And amazingly, I believed what I read. I didn’t understand it all, but I believed it. That’s when I started going to church and making friends with Christians. After College I started speaking at Christian youth outreaches and sharing my testimony and telling kids how they could have a relationship with Jesus too… no matter what their background or what their family believed.

My name’s Ben.

I’d heard it all before. Growing up in a Christian home I heard it my whole life. I believed there was a God and that He lived in my heart before I knew what a heart was. But I believed it all without question, because my family believed and I never knew any different.  Then in High School I saw how big the world was and how many different people and places and faiths there were and I wanted it all to be okay. You know? I wanted my Jewish friends, and my friends that thought it all started from some primordial goo billions of years ago, and my Muslim friends… I wanted to just accept it all as being alright. That God wasn’t going to punish some people for believing different things. I guess I started to think that all roads could lead to Heaven.

Then one day I was with my high school church group and this guy came to share with us about how he came to faith in Jesus from a Muslim home. And I know he didn’t say things I hadn’t heard before, but somehow, this time, the words made sense. I understood that Jesus is the only way to Heaven, to forgiveness, to a forever life with God. And I didn’t see it as exclusive anymore. Like I had the right thing, but everyone else wasn’t allowed into my club. But I understood that Jesus came for all of us. And if I was going to choose to believe in Jesus, as Savior of the world, then I was going to have to take Him to all of the people around me. Not because my religion is better than theirs, but because my Savior can save anyone, anywhere, from any religion. I changed that day. Radically changed.

My name is Gramma Ethel Higgins. 

I’m Ben’s Gramma. My Grandson always called to tell me what God was busy doing in his life. I remember him calling when he led a neighborhood friend of his to Jesus. Then there was the time he called to read me his school project that he’d written, specifically because he wanted to tell his teacher and classmates about how Jesus Saves. “Jesus Saves”, that was the title of his report.

And I remember the Saturday morning he called to tell me all about his trip to Peru that was coming up. He was only 14, and he said that he was excited that God was calling him to do something very clear. He told me that he wanted to see multitudes come to Christ. I’ll remember that always, “multitudes” he said. I listened and as always I wanted to help, so I told him to send me a support letter, and I’d help get him there.

Months later, after he’d returned home I got another call. It’s was Ben, but he somehow sounded much older. His voice was strong and sure; O I know I’m just a Gramma, but I could tell that my boy had grown up into a man that summer. It didn’t surprise me when he called again to tell me that he’d be going back the next summer. Again I knew my part was to give money to get him there. It was a joy to do that small part in helping him tell others about Jesus.

But the call I wish never came, was the one from his Dad, my son, telling me that Ben had come home from Peru very sick this time. He’d contracted an infection and was getting sicker by the day. We knew, all of us did, that BJ would have opposition from our enemy. We just didn’t know that it would cost him his young life. He suffered for a couple of weeks in the hospital and then went on to glory.

Hello, my name is Adelogonda.

I am from Peru, in the city of Tumbes. I was a giggly girl with all my friends the day God spoke to me. At school we were taken out into the courtyard to watch a show. They were students from America, and our teacher wanted us to listen to their English and then talk with them afterwards, to practice our English. So they did their show. There was a fight between Jesus and Satan and I watched them with their swords, and I knew in my heart that their story was about me. After the play a boy got up. He was smaller than a man, but talked like a man with something important to say. And he told us, he told me, about my sin. He was not unkind, but loving. And he said that God loves me and wants to have a friendship with me, and He can clean me from all my sin. I wanted… this.

Afterwards I was with my giggling girlfriends, and the same young man walked right up to us and asked us if we wanted to accept this gift that Jesus came to give us. He told us all these things again, and all five of us girls said yes, and prayed to receive Jesus as our Lord that day.

I knew that it was big in my life, but I didn’t know what I would do when I got home. My family all goes to the church together, to mass. But I never understood any of it. I did not think anyone, except maybe my Abuelita, did. So I did not plan on telling anyone.

When I got home from school, my Father was sitting at the table with my Mother and Grandmother and Aunts and Uncle, and my little Brothers, and they were all leaning over the table looking at something together. When I came in my Father looked up and waved me over to him. His eyes were red and I was scared that maybe someone had died and was lying there on our table. I looked for my littlest brother and he was standing nearby, so I wasn’t worried it was him. I remember that.

When I came up beside my Father I saw that there on the table were Bible papers telling the same story of God’s love and forgiveness that I had heard that day. My Father had been at work that morning in the city and these same Americans had acted out their show in the square where my Father is a policeman. He had told them they could use the square for 20 minutes. They set up and did their play and everyone stopped what they were doing and watched and listened. So did my Father. And… He said that the story they told was about him. And afterwards, as the American actors talked to all of the people who had watched their show, “a small boy,” he said, “who talked more like a man, came up to me and asked me if I know this Jesus, who takes away the sin of the world.”

I began to cry, because I knew it was the same boy-man who had come and talked with me. And that night my Father told the story and read the papers he was given to us all, and our entire family believed together.

I do not know what to do now. Everything has changed for me and for my family. I do not know what God wants from me, but I am not afraid. This battle I knew was going on in my heart is all done. In its place is a new power. I must tell others about Him. Like He got down deep in my heart and is now trying to get out… out to others.

My name is Carmen.  

My neighbor Adelagonda is such a sweet friend, and I can tell she is changed by this new faith in her. She tells me and tells me about Jesus and what he can do in my heart. I knew my heart and I knew that she spoke of something wonderful, but she didn't know me like she thought she did. There are things I have done… Anyway, I tell her no. No thank you, Adelagonda. I am so happy for you. But no.

One day she came to me and said she’d dreamed of me. And she saw a necklace, like this… linked together. I was a link she said. But my link was broken. She cried. And I cried to, but I think I cried more for her than for me. I was sorry I could not believe.

It was four years later when my Mother died that I started wondering about God again. My Mother was always faithful going to Mass and she prayed for me, but I didn’t want what she and Adelagonda were offering me, until then.

When my Mother died I felt very much alone. My sin and my shame were always with me, but with my Mother gone, it was too difficult for me to bear. I went to Adelagona’s Mother, since my friend was not at home anymore but living in another city. Adelagonda’s Mother told me about Jesus being with us forever, and we are not alone, and we don’t need to keep feeling bad about our past sins. We can be forgiven. And so I prayed to God, telling Him that I was sorry it had taken me so long, but I believe now. I finally saw that Jesus could forgive me, because He died for me. I am not alone now. I am very much not alone now. I am free. 

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One person’s faith to step out and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ doesn’t stop with one redeemed life. The passage of faith continues, affecting generations for the Kingdom of God. So be the one, who by the power of the One, shares with one… then pray for the many.