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Becoming a Baptist I continued attending the non-denominational church for a year and a half. Every day after school I would go to the church and ask what I could do to help. I would vacuum, clean the bathrooms, empty the garbage, organize files, anything I could to help out. Every night of the week I would go to church to participate in the ministries there. There was a night Bible School so I enrolled in that. The only day of the week I did not go to church was Saturday and that was because there was not anything going on on Saturday! I even worked on a youth crises hotline helping to counsel other teenagers who had serious problems.
During this time, as I would study my Bible, I would come across questions about doctrine. When I read something in the Bible that I thought taught something different than what my church was teaching, I would go to one of the assistant pastor's and ask them to help me understand it. Through reading the Old Testament, I came to understand that women should only wear dresses. I did not however begin to wear dresses at this point. I read the Bible verses about women dressing modestly so I asked my friend Hannah why we would go to the beach as a youth group and wear bathing suits if we were supposed to be modest. She said that that was why she used a one piece! I read the verse about men having short hair, but tried to explain it away as not being applicable for today. In a discussion about Bibles in the nighttime Bible class, I saw many people become angry when the teacher said that ALL Bibles contain the Word of God, no matter what type. I thought, "that can't be true". In my 16 year old mind I reasoned that if two Bibles contradict each other, only one can be the word of God. When the church organized a men's prayer breakfast between the men of our church and the men from the local Catholic church, I became very confused. I thought, "how can they all pray together if the Catholics teach so differently about salvation?"
Finally, I was invited to go to a different church where they were showing a movie on why secular rock music was wrong. The movie was going to be shown for two Wednesday night services. After the first one, none of my friends wanted to go back, so I went back by myself. The church and movie were only trying to teach that secular rock music was wrong, but I left with a different idea all together. The movie taught that it was not so much the words that were wrong, but the music itself. They showed how rock music speeds up a person's heart beat and good music is the same beat as the heart. I left the service, got in my car, and immediately threw the Christian rock music I had out the window! Right then I began to pray to God to show me which church to attend. I thought that I was the only person in the whole world that knew that Christian rock music was wrong! I knew that I could no longer be part of a church that was using rock music to reach teenagers. I thought that there was no way I wanted to visit every church in my town until I found the right one, so I prayed that God would send someone to invite me to go to church.
A few weeks later I got a job in a nursing home as an activities assistant. It happened to be the only nursing home in my city where the only Independent Fundamental Baptist church in my city had a nursing home ministry. Within a week I found myself in a revival meeting with Evangelist Phil Shuler at West Coast Baptist Church in Vista, California. At first I thought it strange to see all the women in dresses. I checked to see if they were wearing jewelry and make-up! They were! After church I went to the pastor and told him that this was the church for me. Two months after I began to attend West Coast, the pastor came to my home to visit my father. That night, my father accepted Christ into his heart! What a blessing! The following Sunday my father was baptized and I officially changed my membership.
The week before I officially joined the Baptist church, I came to the conviction that I should wear only dresses. I got rid of all my pants and quickly learned what thrift stores were for! I continued to attend the Baptist church for the year. I had already graduated from high school so during this time I was working full time. Around February, my dad and pastor decided that I needed to go off to Bible college. Pastor invited me to the Spring Preaching conference at Fairhaven Baptist Church. Well, he ended up not going and my dad could not go so my dad sent my mom and I to Indiana. My mom only knew that we were going to check out a college… so she was more than a little surprised when she found out it was a preaching conference! I liked the college and church and the following September I enrolled. During my freshman year of Bible college the director of BIMI came to speak at our college. I spoke with him about how can a person find out if they are called to the mission field or not. He said. "I have never seen it fail that when a young person completely surrenders their will to God, that God does not show him what His will is for their life." I took his words as gospel truth and began to systematically surrender my will to God. I got a map of the world and every day I began to pray about each country. In my prayers, I would surrender my heart to be willing to go to a country, if that was the will of God. I remember praying, "Lord I don't want to go to Russia, it is too cold there! But please help me to surrender my will to be willing to go if that is where you call me." I prayed for Africa, the Phillipines, Columbia, until I finally started to pray about Mexico. As I began to pray about Mexico, I began to have a burden and desire for Mexico that surpassed more than just a simple surrender to do God's will. I felt that it was God's will for my life to one day be a missionary to Mexico. I finally arrived at this decision during Christmas break of my freshman year. I felt that if I kept it quiet to myself that it would be too easy to break my commitment so I decided to make a public commitment to one day go to Mexico. I also made a promise to myself that I would never date anyone unless they were called to Mexico or still praying about where they should serve God.
Three years later I graduated college and returned to my home church to teach in the Christian school. Since I made my decision to one day go to Mexico, I had many people telling me I was foolish and that God did not "call" girls to anything but a husband. I do not believe that a girl needs to be called, or that God necessarily calls girls, but I am just sharing how God worked in my life. During those two and a half years teaching, I was able to give myself completely over to the work of the ministry. I taught a Sunday School class, ran a bus route, and helped any way I could. In August of 1998 a family from Los Angeles came to our church to start a Spanish church. What a blessing that was. The pastor spoke a little English, but his wife did not speak any! I gave up my ministries in the English church and began to help them start the Spanish church. I went soulwinning with the pastor's wife every Saturday and on Sundays I helped to organize people to drive vans to come pick up people for church. Eventually we were able to run a bus. They did not want to have any children in any of the services so I began to teach the children's classes. That was very interesting in the beginning since I only had a basic grasp of Spanish. At first I would just read the Bible verses and show flashcards that related to the stories. I bought a children's Spanish hymnal and learned the songs as the kids learned them. Pretty soon though, I was able to teach the class just like I would teach in English. Little did I know, but how I did hope, that God was preparing me for my future ministry.
In August of 1998 I went to visit my grandfather in Arizona to try to win him to the Lord. While I was gone, my church in Vista was visited by a very special person. His name is Arturo Munoz. Arturo was finishing up summer school at Oklahoma Baptist College when a friend of his invited him to help him drive to California so his friend could go visit and try to witness to his brother. Arturo got permission and the two of them left for California. While they were there, they visited three churches. Arturo's friend heard that another graduate of OBC was visiting a church in Vista so they decided to go see their friend. Their friend happened to be a missionary to Tibet and Toboga who had planned on leaving Vista five days earlier, but his trailer broke down! While they were visiting the missionary to Tibet said, "Why don't I introduce you to the pastor?" They went to the pastor's office and Arturo mentioned that he was going to be a missionary to Mexico. The pastor invited him to come to the missions conference in January of the following year. While Arturo was waiting for the pastor to get some papers, three ladies were also in the office. All three of them have taken credit for what happened next! Apparently one lady told the other lady, "He's a missionary to Mexico, and he's single! He'd be great for Nicole!" Then the second lady told the pastor's wife, "He's going to Mexico…. Nicole!" The pastor's wife then turned to Arturo with great emotion and said, "I HAVE A WIFE FOR YOU!" Arturo did not know what to think, but to make a long story short, the pastor's wife gave him my address, phone number, and photo. He wrote me one time in August, once in September, and once in October. We finally met the Monday before Thanksgiving of that year and 10 weeks later we were engaged. We married June 26, 1999. After our marriage, we drove to Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico to work in my father-in-law's church for six months. After six months, we returned to the states and were on full-time deputation for one year before returning here to Mexico. We came to Puebla in June of 2001. God has also blessed us with two children, Japheth (2 years old), and Rachel, (6 months old). I hope this testimony of God's grace has been a blessing to you.
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