Grandpa's Cookies

Red and white dough twisted together, infused with peppermint flavoring and little pieces of peppermint candies- Grandpa’s Candy Cane Cookies. Shortbread dough dipped in milk then rolled in sesame seeds, cooked until golden brown. Best served while still warm with hot chocolate- that’s Grandpa’s Sesame Seed Cookies. As one takes a bite of this next cookie their mouth will be filled with a variety of delightful goodness. This cookie is crusty on the outside and chewy on the inside. It is filled with the sweetness of almond paste and yet salty from the taste of pine nuts- these are Grandpa’s Pinoli Cookies. The all around favorite cookie is a 3-layered, Neapolitan-Italian-flag cookie. In between each layer is a filling of fruit preserves and topped with a thin layer of melted chocolate. Once the chocolate is hardened they are cut into tiny, bite-size squares. We simply call these- Grandpa’s Three-Colored Cookies.
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Every year, at the end of November, my Grandfather, Joseph Mangino, a retired New York City Policeman, would begin his holiday baking. Grandpa was a big man with broad shoulders, a loud booming voice, chubby cheeks a big smile and a twinkle in his eye. Everyone loved his baking and looked forward to it. Then one year everything began to change.
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“I don’t know Franny,” my grandpa says to his daughter who is my mom. “I don’t think I am going to be able to send cookies out to everyone this year.”
“Why not?” Asks my mom.
“I just don’t feel up to it,” he says with a sigh. “I don’t think I could get it all done.” I couldn’t imagine Christmas without Grandpa’s baking. It was a part of who he was and a part of what made Christmas.
“We’ll help you make them,” says my mom. “You can teach the girls. They need to learn anyways.”
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So the baking lessons began…
The thing about Grandpa’s baking lessons was that it didn’t matter if you already knew how to bake. When you were in HIS kitchen, you did things HIS way! I remember standing in the kitchen one day after putting all of the dry ingredients in a bowl; I got out the hand mixture to blend it real well. I plugged it into the wall then stuck it into the bowl, which was on the kitchen counter.
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“Uh, uh,” said Grandpa. “Stick the bowl in the sink and then begin mixing it. This way if any of the flour comes out it will go in the sink.”
“Okay Grandpa,” I said. Next I got out the eggs and began cracking them into the bowl.
“Uh, uh,” said Grandpa. You gotta get a separate bowl and crack each egg individually to make sure the egg is good. Otherwise if one egg is bad it will ruin the whole batter.”
“Okay Grandpa,” I said. I began rolling the cookies out and putting the lumps on the cookie sheets.
“Uh, uh,” said Grandpa. “Those cookies are way to big. Make them smaller.”
“Okay Grandpa,” I said with a sigh.
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When I would get something right Grandpa would nod his head in approval.
“Atta girl Maria, atta girl.” Then when I would take the cookies out of the oven and they were just right Grandpa would smile. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he would say taking a bite.
So became our tradition, each year at Christmas time, my mom, my sister and I would take turns on different days baking cookies with Grandpa.
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“You gotta get this right Mary” Grandpa said to me one year as I baked. “I might not be here next year to show you how to do it.” I was startled to hear him say this.
“Don’t say that.” I said looking up from what I was doing. I couldn’t imagine him not being here.
“Well you never know,” said Grandpa. “Everyone dies some time.”
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We all knew that Grandpa was getting weaker with each passing year. His body was deteriorating from Parkinson disease, but we didn’t want to think about it.
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Then one day it happened. Grandpa died. I remember sitting in his recliner in the living room watching as early in the morning two men from the mortuary came to take his body away. A soft blue blanket covered him as the men rolled his stretcher down the hallway, through his kitchen and out of his house. It took a while for the reality of the situation to really sink in. Grandpa was gone.
However the things that he taught us still live on...
As Christmas time comes around my family and I begin our baking. It’s a family thing and my brother John has picked up the role of BOSSING everyone around now. Through the laughter and teasing of who broke the cookies and who cooked them too long, I remember Grandpa’s words to me;
“You gotta get this right Mary, I might not be here next year.”
“ Don’t worry Grandpa. I promise, I am going to get it right!” I start mixing the ingredients in a bowl on the counter. Then I remember and put the bowl in the sink. I pull out a separate bowl for the eggs and hope the cookies aren’t too big. As I take the cookies from the oven, I know Grandpa would be smiling, nodding his head in approval, satisfied in knowing that his cookies are still being baked. If I listen closely as I take a bite of a cookie I think I hear Grandpa. “Atta girl Maria, atta girl.” I take another bite and savor the taste. “Beautiful, beautiful!”

Thank God for my laundry! ;)

Laundry. Laundry, laundry, laundry, laundry! Sometimes it seems like that’s all I ever do! I look at the pile of dirty clothes on the chair in my room; it seems to be growing quite rapidly. Then my eyes fall on the overflowing suitcase that still has not been unpacked from the last church conference. Didn’t I just do laundry like last week or something? I sigh; it looks like I am going to have to do laundry again this week too. I scoop up as many clothes as I can carry at one time and head to the wash machine. As I work I can’t help but talk to myself...
“Your such a hard worker girl, people should just start calling you Cinderella.” I give myself a little pat on the back as I open the lid of the wash machine and start putting in my clothes. The whole scene is seriously like right out of the Cinderella Fairytale. I even think I hear my evil stepsisters screaming in the background. “CinderMary! Hem my dress, tie my sash!” Oh but wait, I don’t have any stepsisters and I don’t know how to sew. It must be my wonderful big sister reminding me NOT to use half the gallon of detergent and to remember to take the clothes out to dry, so they don’t sit in the wash machine for a week growing mildew. I head back to my room to reload my arms, sighing dramatically. Just how much longer is this princess gonna have to wait for a rich prince to come along and hire her a housekeeper?
As I am complaining my mind suddenly goes back to a conversation that took place quite a few years ago…
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“It’s recess time!” Says our teacher Mrs. Martina to my fourth grade class at Black Mountain Elementary School in Cave Creek Arizona. “Everyone line up at the door.” As I stand in line waiting, one of the kids turn to me,
“You must really like that skirt Mary, you wear it EVERY day. I look down at my worn, cotton, navy blue skirt.
“Uh, yeah,” I say, “It’s my favorite!”
“Oh, do you have a lot of them?” asks another kid?
“Umm,” I hesitate not sure what to say. The reason I wear the same skirt everyday is not because it is my favorite, but because it is the only play skirt I have. My black skirt is reserved for church on Sundays. I hesitate, then, instead of telling them the truth, I lie.
“Oh yeah,” I say, “I have a lot of skirts just like this one hanging up in my closet!”
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My cheeks burn because I hate lying, but I am too embarrassed to tell the truth. The truth is that every night after I take a shower, put on my pajamas and go to bed, my mom is up late doing laundry. It’s not because she wants to keep up on the laundry, but because if she doesn’t, my siblings and I won’t have any clean clothes to wear to school the next day.
Sometimes my shoes would get so worn the sole would be flopping off of the shoe. Instead of throwing them away my mom would hot glue the sole back on, because new shoes just weren’t in our budget. I can still feel the excitement I felt one day as I was given a new skirt to wear. It was one of the ugliest skirts I have ever seen. It was an old blue granny skirt with little green whales on each side of the pockets. The pockets on the skirt were so huge you could fit a sack of potatoes on each side. Yet I loved that skirt, not because I thought it was cute, but because now I had TWO play skirts. I remember packing for a 3-day youth conference and hoping that no one would notice that I would be wearing the same thing twice.
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I think about my closet now. It is filled with an abundance of beautiful clothes. Clothes that I like and are my own style. Sometimes I wish that these youth conferences were longer because there just isn’t enough services to show-off all my outfits. Hanging on my bedroom door is a shoe rack filled with shoes. Instead of one pair of play shoes and one pair of church shoes, I have the privilege of being able to choose from a variety of shoes whatever I think matches best. Above all this, I even get to accessorize, which I absolutely love to do! ;) I have hooks on the wall filled with cute purses and a drawer full of headbands, flowers, ribbons and clips that add just the right touch to my outfits.
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One Sunday night some of the girls from church and I are in the ladies bathroom excitedly discussing the next youth rally our church is hosting. Of course we are discussing the usual stuff, what guys we hope will show up and all that fun stuff when all of the sudden I gasp.
“Oh no!” I say placing my hand on my heart. “Oh no, oh no!”
“What’s wrong?” the other girls ask worriedly. I sigh,
“What do you guys think I should wear to the youth rally? “ I ask dramatically. Everyone immediately busts up laughing at my crazy antics. It may seem silly, but inside I really am wondering, because I really do have so many beautiful clothes to choose from.
I look down at all the clothes I am piling into the wash machine and I feel a bit shameful for complaining about washing them. I know by the world’s standards I may not be rich, but I am extremely blessed! I am learning to have an attitude of gratitude. Yes, there are a lot of people that don’t have to do their own laundry and too often it is because they don’t even have any laundry to wash.
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As I get back to my laundry I think I can hear the birds singing and I hum a little tune as I work. Ok, ok, lets be honest, THIS IS CinderMARY we’re talking about. ;) It’s more like I hear the music blaring from my playlist and I dance a jig as I sing off key at the top of my lungs, “I feel the joy of the Lord falling fresh on me!” As I dance, I readjust my tiara, pour in the soap, put down the lid and listen as the wash cycle begins. It may seem weird but I smile as I think about washing clothes again next week. This princess thanks God for laundry!

Tears

I look at my phone and notice I have a text message. It's from my girl.

I quickley open the text to see what she said.

All it says is...

Hey Mamma

Hey Mamma...No one knows.

No one could quite understand what this means to me.

She has never called me this before, but it means so much.I can't stop the tears from trickling down...
I don't bother to wipe them away. I just sit and remember. Just one more time. This story is being reposted just one more time.Updated, edited and revised.

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TEARS

What are tears? This was the question that plagued my mind as I began packing her bags. I felt my eyes beginning to fill up. What are tears? I went to her closet and began taking her clothes off the hangers, her polka dot skirt, her zebra print shirt, her cute jean skirt with the embroidered flowers and fringed hem, and began piling them on the bed. I hate crying and I try to stop myself, but I just can’t. The first tear wells up slowly, quickly slipping down my cheek. Than another, another, and another. I touched my eyelashes and they were wet. What are tears? According to Webster’s a tear is simply a drop of salty liquid, which flows from the eye.
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However; at the College of Apostolic Ministries, my teacher, Brother Kelly, emphasized to our class many times how important it is to weep before God. I can hear him so vividly talking to our class, telling us we need to pray for a weeping spirit when we pray. I didn’t understand what could be so important about our tears? Why would God want them? What are tears? I did not know, but I did know that the answer to my question was somehow wrapped around understanding the nature of love.
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The cause of my tears was because the little girl I loved was leaving. Hadassah, who was 11-years-old, had lived with my sister and I for two and a half months, but now her mother had arrived from Liberia and she would be living with her. I tried to be strong as I continued packing her bags, but with each item I packed, I felt like I was packing a piece of my heart.
How Hadassah came to live with me began about five minutes before church one Sunday morning. I was walking out of the ladies prayer room into our sanctuary when my phone rang. It was Hadassah, one of the African refugee kids we pick up for church. Most of the African kids that came to church were from pretty rough homes. I quickly answered the phone...
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“Hadassah? All I heard was uncontrollable crying.


“What’s wrong? “ I asked.
“My grandma doesn’t want me,” she sobbed. “Hadassah had come to the United States with her grandma when she was seven and I had been bringing her to church for about a year at this time.
“What do you mean she doesn’t want you? What happened?” I asked.
“I was bad,” she said, as if that was something new, “I mean really, really bad,” she continued, clarifying herself. “I stole stuff and now my grandma doesn’t want me. I am so scared,” she sobbed. “I want to live with you Mary. Please, please, please let me come live with you!”
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I don’t remember the rest of our conversation, but after church I went over and talked to her grandma, after much discussion, it was agreed that it would be best for Hadassah to come live with my sister and I until her mother arrived from Liberia. I never thought twice about taking Hadassah in. It didn’t matter to me that I was a 24-year-old, single, white lady and she was an 11-year-old black girl with a major attitude. If God wanted me to do this, I would.
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As soon as Hadassah came to live with us I began working with her on the things she needed to change. Sometimes we would sit with her in my lap, rocking on the rocking chair in our living room.
“I don’t know why I steal things,” she told me. “I want to be good, but I keep being bad,” she sighed.
“You can change,” I would tell her, “but you have to ask God to help you.”
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She began to open her heart to me, telling me about the kind of life she had been exposed and hardships she had endured. Hadassah’s own mother was only a year older than I. She said it was typical for an African woman to have kids by 15, often even younger. She said that she was scared she could end up like all the African woman she knew, unmarried with many children.
I told her that it didn’t matter what kind of a life she came from, if she yielded her heart to God, He would use her to do great things. Although it may seem simple, it was working. People were constantly coming to me, telling me what a difference they saw in Hadassah. She felt like God had set her free from her habits of lying, stealing, and cursing. It was like a burden had been lifted from her and there was a special sweetness about her now.
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With Hadassah around life was always fun and interesting. I’ll never forget when we took her on a family vacation to San Diego. Hadassah and I were out wave jumping in the ocean when all of a sudden a big gulp of water went into her mouth.
“Who put the salt in here?” She said spitting it out, disgusted.
“God did,” I said laughing.
“Oh, well if God did it then I guess its okay,” she said.
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Every night we read the bible together, and prayed, always remembering to ask God to bring her mother here quickly. Hadassah had her own room but she always preferred sleeping on the floor beside my bed. One night I was drifting off to sleep when Hadassah woke me…
“Mary,’ she whispered. I tried to pretend I was sleeping. “Mary,” she whispered again, louder this time.
“What?” I said groaning in annoyance.
“I want to sing like a black girl,” she said. I sighed,
“So what do you want me to do? You're black, just start singing!”
“Teach me!” She said.
“How in the world do you expect me to do that?” I said sitting up in bed now.
“Please Mary!”
“Dude Hadassah,” I said laughing. “I wish I could sing well for a white girl and you want me to teach you to sing like a black girl?”
“Oh come on Mary,” she said.
“Okay, okay,” I said giving in, “Repeat after me, Oh happy day,” I said belting out my best black imitation. This resulted in the two of us laughing hysterically.
“You don’t sound like no black girl,” she said laughing.
“See,” I said, “I told you I couldn’t teach you!”
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Our lives continued on together, in a comfortable, fun way. But sooner than we had anticipated her mother arrived from Africa. We had prayed for this to happen every night before bed. Now it seemed like God had answered our prayers too quickly.
I remember the two of us sitting on the floor in my classroom at church, sobbing. I pulled her onto my lap.
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“I don’t want to go back Mary!”
“No matter what happens Hadassah, I love you,” I said. “You’ll always be my baby.”
“How can I be your baby? You did not born me,” she said falling back into her broken English.
“Hadassah,” I said, “I may not have physically given birth to you, but I borned you in my heart!” "I don’t want to go back,” she said sobbing again.
“I know,” I said softly. I know, I know, I know. As we sat there crying, our tears fell onto each other, binding our hearts forever.
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After Hadassah went back, I watched sadly as she slowly began to slip back into her old ways. She is 12 now and beginning to grow into a young lady. She is absolutely beautiful, but the childlike sweetness is gone, replaced by and exterior of false happiness. My heart tightens as I see her in her tight shirts and short-shorts.
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It’s a Sunday evening and I am with my friend Jacqui, seeing if any of the kids want to come to church. I see Hadassah out playing basketball
“Hey Hadassah” I say, “Give me a hug!” She comes running over and I pull her into an embrace. She smiles as she runs her fingers through my waist-length hair and tells me I look pretty with my hair down.
“I am praying for you,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says softly. I touch her cheeks and feel the smoothness of them; they are still just as soft as I remember.
“You know that you are still my baby, right Hadassah?”
“Yes, I know.” she says. We look at each other for a minute, remembering. Then the moment is broken. She reaches into my zebra print purse and grabs my last two sticks of sweet watermelon gum, “Can I have these?” She asks.
“Yeah, sure,” I say smiling. We say goodbye, then instead of going to church, she zooms off, in her super-mini, mini skirt and continues playing basketball.
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The next day is Monday. Another morning has come and as I arise from my slumber. I know what I must do. I wipe my sleepy eyes and drag my body to the living room. I feel like going back to sleep, but there is something that compels me to go on. So I plop down on the brown rug in our living room and I begin to pray. And as I pray I begin thinking about Hadassah...
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“Oh God,” I cry out. “Get a hold of my little girl.” I begin to feel that familiar trembling. “Watch over her Jesus. Send your angels to stand guard over her.” I feel tears beginning to fill up in my eyes. “Don’t let her forget God,” A tear slips out of my eye. “When she listens to that worldly music, remind her of singing ‘I got the Holy Ghost’. When she puts on immodest clothes, remind her of the day she gave all that up. When she feels the heaviness of sin, reassure her that there is forgiveness at an alter of repentance.”
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My nose is running as the tears continue to fall. I touch my eyelashes and they are wet. I taste the tears; they are salty. But it’s okay; I don’t mind the tears now. Because I know that God put them there, just like He put the salt in the ocean. And although so much has changed with Hadassah, there is one thing that remains the same; I still love her.
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What are tears? Now I am beginning to understand. I am starting to see why Brother Kelly kept emphasizing the importance of them in prayer. I know now why God wants them. God knows that we only cry over someone we care about. What are tears? Tears are so much more than just a salty liquid that flows from the eyes. Tears are what happen when you love someone so much it begins to leak out.

Turned Around

Dirty. Vile. Empty. Worthless.

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That’s how this 17-year-old skater punk says he felt as he stood in his backyard the morning after his acid trip. He couldn’t shake the memories of what the acid had done to him the night before. He was filled with fear and paranoia.

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For three days he stayed at his house, too scared to go outside. He had so many friends, but he felt all alone. How had this happened? When did his life become so miserable?

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“I just wanted to be cool,” says Samuel Karlson, a Building Repair technician at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale. Karlson says that he was raised in a Pentecostal church, but as he got older he last interest. At Paradise Valley High School, Karlson says that all the Christians were considered geeks, and he had a strong desire to be popular. He says he would do just about anything to fit in.

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At the time, Karlson did not realize that it was the miserable state he found himself in after his acid trip, that would cause him to become the devoted Christian he is today.

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“The first time I smoked pot was in seventh grade,” says Karlson. He doesn’t remember how, but one of his friends got some pot. Karlson and his buddy went to Look-Out Mountain Park by his house. He says he was scared to death about taking drugs, but he did it anyways. He was really uncomfortable with the way he felt being high.

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“But it grows on you,” he says. “One thing leads to another and before you know it, you’re caught up in a hole.”
Karlson says that he was not a drug addict. He says he never needed any specific drug. He and his friends just did whatever they had on hand whenever they felt like it, but never a specific drug.

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What Karlson really liked was alcohol. The first time he got drunk was when he was a freshman in high school. It was at a party his older brother threw while his parents were out of town. He says he remembers getting so drunk that he can’t even remember what happened. His sister had to cone in and check on him periodically through out the night to make sure he wasn’t choking on his vomit.

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Although Karlson’s first experience with drinking wasn’t the most pleasant, he did enjoy the way he felt drunk.

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“It was fun,” he says, “and very addicting.”

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Karlson continued drinking, partying and having fun. But soon it wasn’t just at parties that he and his friends would get high or drunk. This soon became their lifestyle. Karlson says it didn’t matter what they were doing- going to school, hanging out, going to the mall, skateboarding or anything.

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One day he got arrested and expelled from school for getting caught doing drugs off campus during lunch. But that didn’t stop him. He went back and forth between high schools, getting kicked out of one and going to another.

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Then one night he and his buddies tried acid. Taking acid was the most miserable thing he had ever done. Karlson says it wasn’t like the typical high he had felt with other drugs. Everything around him was freaky. Any little movement would make him jump. Things started moving, and he had no control over them.

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His friend had a poster hanging up on his bedroom wall of different marijuana leaves, and all the leaves started changing colors. Karlson went into his friend’s bathroom, and the butterflies on the toilet seat cover started flying. He was filled with fear, and he hated every moment of it.

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The drug lasted all night, and he didn’t get home until 8 or 9 in the morning. When he got home Karlson said his dad, who is a very hard worker, told him he needed to paint the shed in their backyard. Karlson says he remembers trying to paint the shed, but instead he broke down crying.

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He started thinking about how his life used to be, before he stopped going to church, before he started partying, drinking and doing drugs. He started thinking about the camping and hunting trips he used to go on with his pastor and friends from church.

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“I remembered how happy I was and how peaceful life used to be,” says Karlson.

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As he stood there with the paintbrush in his hand, tears streaming down his face, he realized that he had lost his innocence. He realized what he had given up and what he was really missing out on.

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For three days following his acid trip, Karlson was too scared to leave his house. Although he didn’t realize it at the time, he says now that that trip was one of the biggest blessings God has ever given him. Even though he wasn’t ready yet to turn his life back to God, from that point on, nothing was fun anymore.

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His life just kept getting more and more miserable. Karlson says from that point on, he quit doing drugs and turned completely to alcohol. But he was no longer drinking for the fun of getting drunk. Now he was drinking to escape the way he felt inside and to forget the horrible memory of his acid trip.

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He says he was so depressed that if he didn’t have a fear of hell he knows he would have killed himself. “I didn’t even feel like a person anymore,” says Karlson. He did whatever he wanted, but nothing made him happy.

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“To some degree I may have been pretty popular,” says Karlson, “but my buddies and I also had a lot of enemies.”

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He says one time he got into an all-out brawl with one of his good buddies because the guy jokingly flicked the cigarette Karlson had in his mouth into the air. “It was the middle of the night, in the middle of the street, and we were slugging it out,” says Karlson.

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Karlson says that although he was filled with so much hate and so much violence, still he continued on this way. Every day he would think, “Tonight I am just going to drink one more time with my buddies, and then I’ll tell them that I am going back to church.”

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Then one night Karlson went out drinking with his buddies. He came home drunk and went to sleep. Two hours later he woke up scared to death. He could feel the same paranoia he felt the night he did acid.

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“I was so scared I went to my mom’s room and woke her up,” says Karlson.
All he could think about was getting to wherever God was. He says he wanted to pray with his mom at the church because he figured that must be where God was.

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“I didn’t realize that I could talk to God anywhere,” says Karlson. He says that he was so desperate he had his mom call up their pastor, David Abbott, to ask if they could go to the church to pray. Despite the time of night, his pastor told them to come over to his house and they would pray together.

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When Karlson and his mother got there, Bro. Abbott began talking to him about repentance. Karlson doesn’t remember everything that happened, but he remembers that he prayed until he prayed back through to the Holy Ghost, until he felt God’s spirit come back inside of him.

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“I felt like a person again,” says Karlson. He says that to this day one of his most vivid memories was the van ride back home from his pastor’s house. By this time it was about 3 a.m. but he felt such peace. He says it was like the calm after a storm.

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When Karlson got home, he started cleaning out his room. He got rid of clothes, music, posters, anything that had to do with his old lifestyle. He says that he threw away his cigarettes and never again had a craving for them. Karlson says that he never went on a 12-step plan to help him with his addictions. He just surrendered his life completely to God and obeyed his word.

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“My mom never gave up on me,” says Karlson. “It’s like she was just waiting for me to come to her that night. My mom is my angel.”

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Today Karlson is aspiring to be in the ministry at Landmark Pentecostal Church in Scottsdale Arizona. He is involved in the ACTs program and teaches the Wednesday night boy’s bible class. He says that his career goal is to be a preacher.

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“I don’t think that I would ever be happy doing anything else,” says Karlson.

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In February of 2009, Karlson got married. Him and his wife are very involved in outreach and the children’s ministry. The week they got back from their honeymoon, the newley weds immediately began helping pick children up for church.

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It amazes Karlson that God would still forgive him after all he did. He says he was raised going to church, in a good home, with good parents, but he threw it all away.

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Karlson says part of the reason why he loves God so much now, is because he finally realized how much God loves him. Karlson says when he came back he had nothing to offer God.

“God took me back anyway,” says Karlson,

"and He made something, out of my messed up life.”

Is it worth it?

* This is my mom's story. I wrote it for her in first person. It is her testimony...

For me being a teacher had always been more than just a career. It was my aspiration in life, my passion and a dream come true. I had gone to five years of school at Arizona State University to obtain my Masters degree in Special Education. I turned in 25 applications and went on six different interviews before I got my first teaching job. After moving back to New York City and getting married, it was even harder for to find a job because I had been educated in Arizona. However, I finally got a job at a private school for kids that had been kicked out of all the public schools in NYC. My position was teaching the teenage boys.

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These were the kids that nobody wanted; but I loved being their teacher and they loved me as well. There was just something about being able to give them the knowledge to help them prepare for life. It was like deep down inside there was goodness about them that I could help bring out. You had to let them see what was inside themselves. Let them see their own self worth. Being their teacher was very enjoyable and fulfilling in my life.

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Yet despite all this I had made up my mind; I was quitting my position. I was putting aside my teaching position for a new position that had recently opened up. I was becoming a mother. Although my husband does not go to church, he backed my decision to be a stay-at-home-mom. Because his mother had been a stay-at-home-mom he saw the importance in that decision.
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When I let the faculty of the school know that I would not be coming back they were very shocked. Everyone knew that I loved my job and was quite surprised I would be giving it up for my baby. They kept asking me, “Are you sure? Are you sure this is what you want to do? Are you sure you don’t want to just take a maternity leave?” I knew in mind that what they were really trying to ask me was, ‘is it worth it? Is being a mom worth giving up your career?’ But it didn’t matter what they said I was sure about my decision and to me it was worth it.

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The moment I held Theresa, my firstborn in my arms, teaching was put on the back burner. I had a new passion, a new dream and a new career. I was a mommy now and I loved every moment of it. It was just the best thing. You have this little person that was created by God, given to you to care and nurture for. I had such good times.

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When my second child Joseph was 3-months old I got a phone call. It was the Vice- principal of the private school I had taught the boys at. She was calling to tell me that she had recently become the principal of the private school and that the vice-principal position was now open. After thinking about it she felt like I was the best person for the job and was calling to offer me the position. WOW! I was honored that without even an interview I was being offered the vice-principal position.

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I remembered the decision I had made about staying home with my children. The unspoken question went through my mind, “is it worth it?” I looked at my precious, little 3-month old baby and made up my mind.
“Sorry I said to the new principal, but I am a mommy now and that is my job.”
The principal was quite shocked by my response, but as I rocked my little baby in my arms, I knew it was worth it.

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In all, I ended up having five children. My husband did not have a college education so his job was not as high paying as mine had been. My income had added a lot to our financial status. Because of this there were times when money was quite tight. What it really came down to was sacrifice. There were some things in our life we would have to learn to live without. The bible says, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”(Matthew 6:19-21)
I felt that by staying home with my kids, Theresa, Joseph, Mary, John and Abraham, I was laying up some treasures in heaven.

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There were some times when things were hard. I remember the time our wash machine broke and for eight months I hand washed our laundry. My arms would be so tired and I would think, is it worth it? I remember when in the middle of the Arizona summer our swamp cooler went out and for 3-months we went without any kind of air conditioner. As the sweat dripped down my brow, I would think, is it worth it? As I looked at the one, worn out dress in my closet, is it worth it?

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It wasn’t always easy or fun to stick by the decision I had made. We never had money for extras. We never had money to go out to eat, not even for fast food. We rarely went on vacations. Having a house phone was just an extra expense so we had it turned off. We had no health insurance and no house insurance. Sometimes we would eat the same exact meal, rice and chop meat, every night for months, because I had stocked up on those items when they were on sale. People would say, “ How could you live like that?” It’s called trusting in God. The bible says God will supply all our needs; I just had to trust that God would take care of us.

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Sticking, to my decision was a continuous sacrifice and even though it may have seemed like we were really destitute, the reality is that we were really just fine without all those things. The truth, although this may seem hard to believe, is that, wash machines, air conditioners, extra clothes, house phones, cell phones, and restaurants are all luxuries. Things we really like, but don’t really need!

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There were times when God gave our family miracles that helped along the way and there were other times when we just had to trust in God. I remember one time we had no food and no money. Somehow I found myself in a grocery store, trying to figure out how to get food for my family. I remember feeling so desperate I asked God, Would it be wrong if I just took a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk for my children? God said, “Wrong is wrong!” So I went back out to our van, sat there and cried.

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Was it worth it? I could have been in a well off position with a secure job. Instead I was trying to figure out how to get food to feed my family. Yet, more than anything else, I still wanted to take care of my children. I wanted to be there when my kids got up in the morning. I wanted to get them ready for school. I wanted get them on the bus and be there when they came home. Even though by now my 3 older children were in school, I still couldn’t get a day job because I still had two little ones at home with me. I didn’t want them being taken care of by ungodly people. So I continued on.

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I remember one day my daughter Mary came home from fourth grade and told me about something that happened that day at recess. She said that her and a group of kids were standing around talking. All the kids were bragging about their parent’s careers. Some kid’s parent’s were doctors, lawyers, police officers etc…then they turned to Mary and said, “So what does your mom do?” As a child, Mary was very quiet and shy so when they asked her she said that she was kind of embarrassed when she explained that her mom was just a mom. She said the kids kind of snickered when they heard this and said, “You mean she just stays at home and doesn’t do anything?” When they did this Mary got annoyed. She squared her shoulders, stuck out her chin and said,
“Well actually, my mom has her Master’s degree. She could work if she wanted to, but she chooses to stay home with her children because she says that we mean more to her than all the money in the world!” It was moments like this that my decision to stay home was reconfirmed.

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Despite the hard times there were also some great miracles God did for our family. When we first got in the church I remember sitting down and figuring out our finances. After paying all the bills and paying tithes, we had no money left for food. I remember praying and asking God to somehow supply food for our family. All of the sudden there was a knock on my door. It was my sister-in-law with boxes of food. “Here,” she said breezing in, “my husband’s mom thought you could use these.” Then she was gone. I was so grateful for the food I called the lady that had them to thank. She said told that she was going through her pantry and just found all this extra food that she wasn’t going to use. So she boxed it up. Then on three separate pieces of paper wrote the names of three families she thought would benefit the most from the food. She put the names in a box and prayed that God would help her to pick the family that he wanted it to go to. Our family was the name she picked.

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Another time I had figured out all our bills to the exact amount that I had in our bank account. I wrote out checks to all the bill companies, put them in a stamped envelope and put them in the mail. As I was driving down the street I realized that I had miscalculated the amount of money we had in the bank. We were exactly ten dollars short. I knew that this meant our account would bounce and extra fees would be added on as well. But it was to late, the checks were already in the mail. There was nothing she could do, except pray.

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“God, I prayed, you have to help me somehow get ten dollars so our account doesn’t bounce!” We stopped at a red light between Tatum and Shea, when all of the sudden I saw something green blowing back and forth in the intersection as cars drove by. I squinted my eyes to get a better look. “That’s MONEY!” I yelled. We got a green arrow so all the other cars stopped driving. My daughter Mary was about 9-years-old at the time, volunteered to get the money. She jumped out of the van, ran out to the intersection and grabbed the money. (Really, it was safe!) She smiled as she got in the van and said, “It’s ten dollars!” We immediately turned the van around and put it in the bank.

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Another time I was getting in the van at the post office when I saw something fluttering in the wind. It was a fifty-dollar bill. At Christmas time we were always blessed with presents for the kids. God put in on a man named Claude Jacot, who lived in Switzerland to give us money twice for new vans when we needed them. God ALWAYS supplied our needs.

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I look now at my five children all grown up, living for God. My oldest daughter Theresa co-teaches with me in the toddler bible class at church. She has two foster children and is planning on adopting. Her foster daughter Marry Joe says that she has a happy home now and that her new mom has made her happy.

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My second born Joseph is involved in preaching and has done some missions in the Philippines. He recently married a beautiful Filipino girl named Jewel, the daughter of a pastor in the Philippines. Jewel is a blessing to our church with her singing. They will soon be having their own baby.

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My middle child Mary loves writing for the Lord. She teaches the young girls bible class and is very involved in outreach and helping bring people to church. She is a nanny to two children and has the opportunity to impact their lives. Mary feels especially called to the African refugee people God led her to several years ago.

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John is my second to last. He teaches the young man’s class at church. He is involved in outreach and does the PA during church. At age 16 he was diagnosed with Leukemia. Throughout the whole process he kept a good attitude and I never heard him complain. He is currently in remission and actively involved in the work of God.

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Abraham is the baby of the family. He is a hard worker and loves God. When he was 15 years old he moved out of our house to live with his elderly grandfather. He helped take care of his Grandpa for the last two years of his grandfather’s life. Abraham is also involved in outreach and dreams of one day having his own farm.

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The fact that I have five children living for God, when they were raised in a home where only one parent was living for God is an absolute miracle. I honestly believe that it is because of my decision to stay home with them. They already had the worldly influence of one parent in the home. If I had been at work instead of at home, their caregiver would just have been another worldly influence in their lives.

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I am not saying all this to give myself credit. All the glory and honor goes to God. My desire to share this is that I might help inspire or encourage other woman to make the same sacrifice. Yes, it may be hard at times but if you trust in God he will give you the strength. Our financial situation was extreme. Most men have better paying jobs than my husband. Remember, sacrifice is giving up something good, for something better.

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I believe God honored my decision to stay home with them and the reward is ALL my children living for God. The bible says that there is no greater joy than that our children walk in truth. Was it worth it? I think about all the things we went through and all the things we gave up, then I look at my children and I think, YES, it was worth it!

Reaching Back

Outreach. Outreach, outreach, outreach, outreach! The last thing felt like doing was outreach. I sat in the van sulking, waiting for my brother John to come out of the house. We were heading over to Paradise Shadows, an apartment complex located in Palomino Square, a rougher part of the Phoenix area where a lot of our Sunday school children live. I had gotten into a fight with a sibling the night before and was still in a bad mood. I was tired from work and weary in my spirit. Everything inside of me was saying stay home. However, I figured I better go since I was the one that had planned the outreach. Plus, I knew the kids were looking forward to it. I had promised them their favorite pink cookies and they enjoyed the time being spent with them. Still, at the moment, outreach was the last thing I felt like doing.

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How could I do outreach when I felt sad, miserable and had a totally bad attitude? The whole point of outreach is to somehow reach beyond oneself and show to show these children God’s love. There is a saying that says; “Children are like sponges, they absorb everything right out of you.” I knew from experience, especially with these children, just how true this saying was. These children that lived there were mostly African refugees. I knew these kids probably needed the love and attention more than anyone else I knew. Yet I felt like my spirit was already sucked dry and empty. It seemed like there wasn’t anything even left within me for these children to absorb.

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“Well here goes nothing,” I grumbled to myself as we pulled into the parking lot. I grabbed my cookies, slammed the door and headed over to the playground. There were a lot of kids out this evening. There were some older guys playing basketball, little kids swinging, girls doing flips on gym bars, a soccer ball being kicked around, the famous dirty-sock game, (Which is some sort of version of monkey-in-the-middle, a game they used to play in Africa.), wild boys climbing to the top of the swing set instead of actually swinging, kids fighting, cussing, yelling, crying, lauging and of course little 3 and 4 year-olds running around with no adult supervision. It was total pandemonium and chaos, but nothing unusual, just a normal, typical day at Paradise Shadows.

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No one seemed to notice me as I walked by, sitting on top of one of the picnic tables, I continued sulking. I should have just stayed home. I was about to tell my brother we should leave when I heard my name being called.

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“Mary! Mary!” I looked over and saw Manific, a 5-year-old girl. She climbed up on to the table with me, giving me hug then sitting in my lap. As we sat together, something in my heart began to warm up. One by one the kids began to notice me, giving me hugs and fighting to sit in my lap, making me smile.

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“Mary! Mary!” Another voice called out, “did you bring the pink cookies?” It was Festina, a 14-year-old girl that was seriously the biggest fan of my pink cookies.
“Oh yeah,” I said pulling out the cookies, “I almost forgot about these.”
“Yes!” Squealed Festena as I began passing out the cookies. “These are my favorite, I love them!”
“Yeah I know,” I said laughing as I handed her a cookie.
“Mmmm!” she said as she took a bite, totally exaggerating the deliciousness of the cookie.

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Totally energized, I began to push some of the smaller kids on the swings. Took turns spinning around in circles until we were too dizzy to walk straight and sang everyone’s all around favorite church song; I got the Holy Ghost, which was screamed at the top of our lungs, totally off key.
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After a while I saw Esther, a 12-year-old girl that lived with me for a while.
“Esther! I haven’t seen you in FOREVER!” I exclaimed, squeezing her with a big bear hug. “Come on,” I said. “Lets go bring some cookies to Martina.”

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As we walked over to Martina’s, I stopped and said hi to different people offering them pink cookies. By the time we got back to the playground the cookies were gone and it was time to go home. I got lots of hugs as I said goodbye and got in our van. Even as we pulled away, there were kids screaming and chasing the van. Driving home I felt so happy. I couldn’t help but smile. Everything seemed better, brighter, and cheerier. I didn’t feel tired anymore and I wasn’t even mad at my sister. Instead of feeling empty, I felt full and overflowing with happiness. I was surprised I felt this way. What was it that had happened with the kids that changed my whole perspective?

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I had thought spending time with them would only make me feel worse, instead the opposite had happened. A scripture went through my mind “For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison and ye came unto me (Matthew 25:35-36) I realized that when I reached out to those children, I was in a way reaching out to God.

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The saying came back to me; Children are like sponges, they absorb everything right out of you, but a Family Circus Comic strip finishes the quote by saying, but then they squeeze you with a hug and you get it all right back.

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When I passed out cookies, pushed children on the swings or held them in my lap, I was doing it unto The Lord. The little hand holding my big hand wasn’t just any hand, but God’s hand. While I was being Jesus to them, they were being Jesus to me. …Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me (Matthew 25:40).

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When you do unto The Lord you never come up empty handed, because while you are reaching on your side, God's hand is on the other side reaching right back.

Plugging In

“This CD player is soooo stupid,” I yelled in frustration. All I wanted to do was listen to my music, but no matter how many times I hit the play button, the CD player refused to turn on. At this point my brother came in my room to see what was going on. After I told him, he observed the situation for about ten seconds then said,“You know, it might help if you actually plugged the CD player into the wall.”
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Aha! So that’s what the problem was! It was such on obvious mistake and such a simple task to fix the problem. However, in my frustration and embarrassment, I refused to take my brother’s suggestion.
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“Why should I plug it in? I said. “It is a CD player. I have a CD in it, I hit play, now it better play the music!” At this point my brother just looked at me like I was crazy.
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Yet, as foolish as it may seem for me to expect a CD player to work without plugging it into the wall, situations like this happen all the time. We expect great things to happen in our walk with God, without plugging in with Jesus, our spiritual source of power.
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Have you ever struggled with something in your life? Has there ever been something that you tried to get the victory over, but continually failed? At one time or another we have all struggled with something in our life. We have all felt the guilt of failures and mistakes. As an Apostolic young person, there was something in my life that I really struggled with for several years.
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The thing that I struggled with was watching television. You may be thinking; what’s the big deal about watching a little television? That’s no great sin. For me it was a big deal. I had grown up my whole life without a television in our home. I was taught my whole life not to watch it and I understood why I shouldn’t. I knew that television was full of corruption, violence, cussing and imoralitey. Out of my devotion to God I had chosen to keep television out of my life. Now, as a young person, I struggled with this commitment to God.
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It’s easy to not watch T.V. when you are never around one. Now it was different. I worked in an environment that allowed me to watch television whenever I wanted. Now the temptation was right there in front of me and it was a lot harder to turn my head, close my eyes. Instead of turning to God, I gave in and began watching shows.
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The whole time I hated what I was doing. Over and over, I would promise God I wouldn’t watch T.V. anymore. Then slowly it would creep back, and once again I would find myself breaking my promise. I wanted to do right, but no matter how hard I tried I kept doing wrong. Because of one thing I lacked in my life I did not have the power to overcome this temptation.
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Its not like I was a horrible person. I was still living for God, just not to my full potential. Although at times I am known be a little crazy and hyper, most people would consider me to be a pretty good girl. I got the Holy Ghost when I was six and have always loved God. However, the one thing I lacked was a prayer life. Without prayer I didn't have God’s strength. I lacked the power to live an overcoming life.
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So I continued on with my life, trying to live for God, still struggling with television. One year at a Conqueror’s Conference youth convention in Tucson Arizona, I got the revelation I needed to overcome my struggle. During one of the evening services the power of God came very strongly into the church. As I was praying, I felt the spirit of God fall on me. I remember feeling awestruck by His power. Never in my life had I felt the spirit of God so strong. I was praying and crying and weeping before God. ‘This is it I thought. This is my victory. I am going to go home from this youth conference and not ever watch T.V. again.’
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Then, smack dab, right in the middle of this awesome experience with God, I felt a rumbling in my stomach. I couldn’t believe it, my stomach was growling. How could I be hungry at such a spiritual moment? However, it was through the growling of my stomach that God really began to speak to me.
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“You see Mary, you are still human. You are still weak. It doesn’t matter what you get from me right now. What matters is what you do when you get back home. If you want to change, you’re going to have to make a change in your own life.” I knew right then and there, if I wanted things to be different, I was going to have to get a prayer life.
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Living for God is a constant spiritual fight. We may get the victory in one spiritual battle, but the war isn’t over until we get to heaven. Paul openly talks about his own struggle in Romans chapter seven. “For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.” (Romans 7:15)
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It doesn’t matter how much we may want or desire to do good; we are still human. Paul says that in us dwelleth no good thing. From the moment we are conceived, we are bound to fail. Before we even breathe our first breath, evil and iniquity is already in us. No one sits down and teaches a little kid how to lie, but they all do. Nobody has to teach us how to sin; it comes naturally.
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However, Paul goes on in Romans eight to say, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2). What Paul is saying is that on our own we are bound to failure, but through Jesus, we have the power to overcome sin. A man once said, “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing”(Martin Luther King Jr.). It’s like trying to drive a car without putting gas in it or trying to make a CD play work, without plugging it in to the wall.
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So as I stood in my room hitting the play button on my CD player I decided to do something. Instead of continuing to act like a fool, I got smart and listened to my brother. I took the cord to my CD player, plugged it into the wall and hit play. What do you know, the most amazing thing happened, music began to flow into my ears.
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I figured if it worked for my CD player, perhaps it would work in my walk with God as well. When I got back from that Conqueror’s Conference I determined I was going to develop a prayer life. What do you know, as I began praying, the most amazing thing happened, God gave me strength to overcome my struggle. Since gaining a prayer life, God has given me strength to stop watching television. Having a prayer life has changed me. It has made my heart softer and my spirit more sensitive to the things of God.
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The reason why I pray is not because I am some kind of super-spiritual person. I pray because I am not a super-spiritual, goody-goody, perfect kind of person. I pray because I am weak and I need God’s strength. As humans, we are temporal, finite beings. Therefore, we must go to the one that is eternal, infinite and supernatural to receive our strength.
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Don’t be ignorant, continually trying to overcome sin on your own; Ask God for his strength. The key to keeping the victory you get in revival or at a conference, is through a daily time of prayer. Don’t be foolish, plug in with Jesus, the spiritual source of power in your life.

To God Be The Glory

What if your mom was a drug addict, in and out of jail? What if you were just one of five children that your mother had conceived by four different men? How would you feel if you were suicidal by age nine and a ward of the state at age 13?
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“I felt hopeless,” says Jacqueline Cleveland, a member of Pastor David Abbott’s church in Scottsdale Arizona. “It seemed that I was destined to live like this always. I thought that only people in books lived happily ever after. By age 12, I was young, but I felt so old.”
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It was only with the help of relatives who introduced Jacqueline to Christ that her life began to change.
Today she sits in the grass, snuggled up in a blanket, wisps of her light blonde hair blowing in the wind.
She laughs, “You ask me what I liked to do in my spare time. Like duh! I like to do what other girls do, talk about guys, go shopping, talk about guys, hang out with my friends, talk about guys…you know, the usual.
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For this young lady, being a typical young person is a dream come true. “I dreamed it, but it was an unreachable dream,” she says. “Deep down inside, I always thought I would be just like my mom.
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Though she’s not on that path now, it is easy to see why Jacqueline would feel this way. Only as a teenager did Jacqueline emerge from this ongoing nightmare.
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In a home filled with alchoholics and druggies, the nighttime was always the scariest for Jacqueline; she never knew what was going to happen while she and her siblings tried to sleep. Her mom’s boyfriend regularly beat her mother. She remembers one night more than all the others.
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“One night I woke up to the sound of sobbing,” Jacqueline states. “I just laid there and listened as it got louder and louder. I watched as my mom came in the room and crawled into bed with my younger sister, sobbing the whole time. I kept watching as my mom clung to a little seven-year-old for protection. The he came in. He picked my mom up by her hair while she still clung to my little sister. Then he began to beat her.
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After that, Jacqueline always had trouble sleeping at night.
“I used to wake up every morning to a wet pillow," says Jacqueline, "because throughout the entire night, even while I slept, I cried.”
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Jacqueline first began contemplating suicide when she found out that her step-dad was not her biological father. All she knows of her biological father comes from a few pictures and an old love letter that he wrote to her mom. In the letter he writes about how excited he is about having his own child. He talks about marrying her mom and become of him.
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“For a while I hated my dad for leaving me in situation I was in. But I don’t even know him, and I really don’t know what happened. No one will ever talk about the time of my birth,” says Jacqueline.
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Life began to change for her when her Grandma Cleveland began bringing her to church as a ten-year-old girl. Her Grandma, Betty Cleveland, is actually the mother of one of Jacqueline’s step-father’s, also the mother of Sis. Darcy Abbott who is married David Abbott, the pastor of Landmark Pentecostal Church in Scottsdale.
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Jacqueline had grown up a strict Catholic girl, so her first reaction to an Apostolic church was,
“These people are weird! says Jacqueline with a laugh.” However, even though she thought the church was weird, she enjoyed the social aspect and kept coming.
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Jacqueline says she will never forget the night she got the Holy Ghost. It was May of 1996 at a church retreat at the campgrounds in Prescott, Arizona. She says she doesn't remember what Bro. Hopkins, the visiting preacher, preached about that night, but she responded to his call to pray.
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"I remember thinking, I want to know what this is all about," says Jacqueline.
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Jacqueline says when she got the Holy Ghost she honestly felt confused. She says it was like love, joy and peace collided head on with hate, brokenness and strife. Instead of clinging to what she had received, she began to shy away from it.
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Off and on for the next two years, she would come to church with her Grandma but never made a commitment to God. Jacqueline's best friend says she remembers begging Jacqueline at a picnic to be at church the next service.
“Promise me you’ll be at church on Sunday?” Her best friend asked as she hugged Jacqueline goodbye. She says Jacqueline would would give a quick, yes and try to get out of committing to it.
“No!” she would say to Jacqueline, holding out her hand, “pinky promise me you will be here on Sunday!”
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Meanwhile, Jacqueline was miserable. What she had of a family literally began to fall apart. Jacqueline and her siblings got taken away from their mom and became wards of the state of Arizona. Her mom would move around and was always in and out of jail. At first Jacqueline lived in a group home for foster kids, then she lived with one of her step-father's for a short time, eventually she ended up with her Grandma Cleveland.
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Once she lived with her Grandma she started coming to church regularly. However, she still had not completely given her life to God. There were still some things in her life that she wasn't ready to give up. At the end of the school year she had tried out for the Freshman cheerleading squad, much to her disapointment, she didn't make it the team.
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During the summer she got involved with church activities. She went to Old Time Campmeeting, another church camp, but with a lot more Apostolic/Pentecostal churches involved. While she was at camp it appeared to everyone that she was really, truly living for God. However, in her heart she knew she was only acting so she could fit in with the people she had become friends with.
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One night at the camp, Bro. Randy Keys preached a message called “Are you a Contender or a Pretender?” As she stood at the alter that night she knew she was only a pretender. Even though she didn't change anything at the camp, the message got to her. For the next two weeks after camp she thought about it.
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She says she felt like her life was in shambles and that living for God was her only hope. At the time her pastor was on vacation. So unknown to anyone, she wrote a letter to her pastor telling him that she had decided to live for God and that she wanted to be baptized.
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After she wrote the letter and sent it, Jacqueline got a phone call from her school cheerleading squad. They said that one of the girls had been disqualified and that she was the next girl on the list to take her place. Jacqueline says she remembers feeling so excited. Then disappointed as she remembered, she was living for God now, she didn’t dress that way anymore. Yet, no one knew she had made this decision.
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Jacqueline and her grandma were going over to the pastor's house while they were away to check on the dog and get their mail. She says she remembers getting the Abbott's mail and seeing her letter on top. The letter was right there in her grasp. She could take it out and no one would ever know about her decision. Then she could join the cheerleading squad, just like she had always dreamed. For moment she was torn, then she made up her mind, she took the letter and stuck in the middle of the pile.
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“I remember feeling so desperate, she says. “I thought if living for God doesn’t work then nothing is worth living for. I remember feeling like I was freefalling into God's arms,” says Jacqueline, "and being very, very, surprised that He was there to hold me."
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When Bro. Abbott got her letter he was pleasantly surprised with her decision. That Sunday she was baptized in Jesus name and from that day forward Jacqueline has been committed.
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Jacqueline says one of the hardest things for her to learn was forgiveness.
“Forgiveness is something you have to do over and over again," says Jacqueline, "you think you have forgiven. Then it creeps back up on you, and you have to do it all over again.”
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Previously, she hated her mom for the life she put her through, but she also understands the way her mom felt. Growing up, her mom was also foster child, tossed from home to home.
“We were both striving for love,“ she explains of her mom.
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While her mother turned to drugs and men to ease her pain and fill her loneliness, Jacqueline turned in another direction. At age 14, she found solace in the love of God.
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“When I finally gave my life to Jesus, I found hope," says Jacqueline. "I still had a lot of things that I had to work through, but now I had a reason to live.”
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Today, Jacqueline is still standing strong to the decision she made in 1998.
“No one has forced me or fooled me into doing this. It is my own choice,” she says. “This is the life I have chosen to live.”
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Jacqueline excitedly looks forward to the future. She dreams of her family getting in church, writing a book, traveling and of course getting married someday to a Godly man(“Like duh!”).
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Although, her life isn’t perfect, and there are still things she struggles with, she has learned to love life.
“I no longer wake up every morning to a wet pillow, and thanks to God, I no longer want to end my life,” she says.
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Many people may not understand how after such an awful life, Jacqueline can still give thanks.
“Really,” she says, “there are people worst off then I was. Most children don’t ever get taken out of these kinds of situations. I was blessed.”
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Because of her past Jacqueline faithfully helps pick up African refugee kids with her best friend for church. Even during the summer, in 110 degrees, no AC, a 25 minute drive both ways and lot's of body oder, she feels they are worth it.
“That’s the only reason I am here,” she says, “Because someone took the time to pick me up.”
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Jacqueline sums up the way she feels in a song entitled, “My Tribute”.
It’s a Sunday evening at Landmark Pentecostal Church. With eyes closed and arms raised toward heaven, she gentle sways to the music, as her strong soprano voice sing out.
“The voices of a million angels could not express my gratitude. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe it all to thee. To God be the glory, for the things He has done.Jacquelinesc84.blogspot.com

Faith and a smile

I have been very busy of late and am still in the process of completing several writing projects.
In the mean time here is a link for a story I wrote several years ago...
http://www.pvc.maricopa.edu/puma/apr06/ginty.html