Testimony

Where do I start? For starters, I was not even going to go to CMSU. I applied there a week or two before graduating from high school. I had everything set at SW Missouri State in Springfield, but I wanted to stay closer to home.
Little did I know why I had changed my mind. For the first 6-8 weeks at CMSU, I was miserable. I sat in my dorm playing video games (like most freshman males!) and going home every weekend to see family.
Then I went to a student organization fair at the Student Union at CMSU, looking for the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes)

table, but I found the Christian Campus House table. After talking to several people, I went to a bible study and immediately had phone call after phone call every day of people checking up on me and making sure I was doing good. I felt a real acceptance there, so I went back for several weeks.
     Finally in the first week of November 1998, my grandmother died and God really used that to confirm some decisions I needed to make. God used my non-Christian grandma's death to lead me to wanting to be baptized.See, I had only been to church about five times growing up, and that was for Boy Scouts. I had little knowledge of what the Bible was and what sa;vation was. I had never heard any of that stuff till I went to CCH. When my grandma died, I remember praying to God that I did not want to go where she was going. Over the next week, I met with several people, and was baptized one week after my grandma's death.
     I come from avery Non-Christian like home, where there was a lot of anger, verbal abuse and addiction. I always had my outlet in sports and school. When I went to college, I kind of just wanted to leave all my past behind and start over again. As a tall, big kid, I was always expected to be great at everything I did ath;etically. Not only that, but I did not have many close friends in high school, due to the fact I was 6'5 as a freshman.
     Becoming a Christian is essentially starting over, and that is why i look back and see how God really did use all that happened in my life to turn to Him after I was out of that environemnt. Now, I see past situations in a totally differnt light. I see how God had a plan and I eventually saw how that plan worked and I liked His way better than the way I had taken growing up.
     I do not talk to my high school friends that much, because I really feel like a totally differnt person than four years ago. That is what God does, he washes us and makes us white as snow. That is why I think that baptism is so important. It signifies a dying of myself and a birth of Christ in me.
     I cannpt wait for the 5-year reunion to come and be able to tell people what a magnificent change has taken place in my life since 1998.