At Tim Challies' suggestion I, with others, am posting my testimony today.

I was raised in a home where my mother professed Christianity, but my father did not.  My maternal grandmother was a Christian too, and I remember when staying at her house being taken to Vacation Bible School in the summer.

I was baptised in a Methodist church as a baby, and attended a Baptist kindergarten on Guam (though I don't remember attending church then).   I think we attended some Protestant church in Japan at least occasionally but I don't remember clearly.  A few years after we moved to Tulsa we began attending a Unitarian church.  This must have been a compromise between my parents, as my mother would have wanted to attend church, but my father, as a non-Christian, would not have been happy in a Christian church.

I was given a Good News Bible when I was around 7 or 8 and we still lived in Japan.  I remember reading it, and although I already had positive feelings about the Bible, Jesus and God, reading it led to some misunderstandings possibly due to some of the pictures in it (like I began to think it was wrong to count your money!).  I found Jesus quite a tough character.   I wanted to love Him but I was also afraid of Him.  His standards seemed to be so high, and he did not brook foolishness, it seemed to me.

As a preteen I began searching, wanting to know God and be sure I went to heaven.  Being in Tulsa, "the buckle of the Bible belt", there were loads of Christian tracts to be found, and I would read them when I did find them.   I asked my friends who went to church, about their church.  At that time, I verbalized my spiritual need as "trying to find a good church."   Various friends spoke to me about Jesus and how He was the way to God in our last year of elementary school, and into junior high school.   I remember knowing, really knowing,  that I was a sinner, but when I asked many adults about sin, they said it was really bad things like murder, or robbery.  I hadn't done any of those type things, but I knew that I was a sinner, and if Jesus didn't help me out, I was in big trouble.   The Spirit of God was convicting me of my sin.

I'm sure that I believed the Gospel message that those tracts proclaimed, and I did pray the prayer that they usually included in the back - several times.   I did believe I was a sinner, that Jesus Christ had paid the price for my sins, by taking the punishment I deserved, and was the only way to be made right with a Holy God.   I lacked assurance that God had forgiven me, though, so I kept praying that prayer.  

  I went along the first two years of junior high, believing in Jesus, but not having assurance, and trying out different churches as school friends would take me.  I'm really grateful to those parents who picked me up and brought me along to see what their church was like (sometimes they didn't actually go regularly, like the Catholic family who took me).

Towards the end of 8th grade, when I was 14, a Southern Baptist friend, who had witnessed to me for a few years, took me to Eastwood Baptist church.  At the end, there was an invitation, and I felt an odd feeling in my heart,  that I should go forward.  I asked Darlene if she would go with me, and she gently said, "of course".  So I did go forward, and ended up praying the same prayer I had prayed so many times, and afterwards was introduced to the congregation as one who had prayed to receive Christ. 

Assurance didn't come all at once, but I think that the public profession of faith really helped me. Jesus spoke of "confessing Him before men" (telling others you believe in Him).   I could now pinpoint a time when I had actually done something that demonstrated my faith in Jesus Christ.  I felt that I had done something I was supposed to do, confess Him before men, in a way that I had not done before, although I would have agreed to any of the fundamentals of the faith for several years before.   My story certainly does not end there, but it marks a good beginning.   I was different after that day, or that period of time anyway.  Even the world around me looked brighter and more vivid to my eyes - the effect of the awakening of my spirit, I suppose.   I had an awareness of God, of His watching me, of my need of Him, that I had not had before.

I think God, by the Holy Spirit, used His word, a nominally Christian upbringing, tracts left anonymously, testimonies from friends, Gospel message with an invitation, and probably a few other means, to bring me to Himself, and I am grateful.