I am Darren Fabilane, from the Philippines. Currently, I live and work in the United Arab Emirates. I have been married to Arlyn for 10 years. We have our only daughter, Faith. An Engineer by profession, I serve as a pastor in a local church. I want to share my story about why I ended up answering God’s calling and am now studying at Christian Leaders Institute (Learn more about online Bible classes, Click Here).
Exposed to Christianity Young
I was not born a Christian, but I grew up in a Christian community from 6 years young. It was the church where we as a family regularly attended Sunday worship service. As young kids, together with my sister and brother, we were taught by Sunday school teachers. Then I went to college away from my family and our hometown. Sadly, I also went away from the church. City life was way different from the place I grew up in.
During my college study, I seldom went to church and had no Christian groups to be with. However, I did not forget my beliefs. I knew I was a Christian even though my actions sometimes don’t back it up. I still believed what I believed though I slowly was consumed by the world.
Changes and New Direction
Then, after graduating from college, an opportunity to work abroad came up. The dream of a greener pasture enticed me. So, I left my family at a very young age. My lifestyle continued to change, not for the better but under the call of this world. Then I met someone by divine appointment. This person invited me to attend their Bible Study Group. It continued for weeks, then months, and without knowing it, I was part of the group (should I say family) for a year. Then I realized that even though I grew up in a church community, I had so much to learn about Christianity, Christ, and His sacrificial Love for me to have eternal life.
Since then, with the help of the Holy Spirit, I consistently grew in my knowledge and the grace of our Lord God. I committed to different ministries, attended lessons and training. Ten years later, God called me to be one of the pastors of that local church. I have been preaching, teaching, and encouraging everyone with God’s word.
Studying at Christian Leaders Institute
I do not have any formal education or a degree in my spiritual calling as a pastor. However, I have been attending seminars and free online classes to sharpen my mind and abilities, all for the Glory of God. Wanting to be better equipped, I came upon the Christian Leaders Institute website (divine appointment again). Now, I am studying at Christian Leaders Institute, sharpening the God-given talent for His glory. I pray to continue learning and doing what God has called me to do.
Therefore, I am optimistic because of God’s grace. I will update this testimony soon to encourage more people to study and be trained to reach out for more souls.
My name is Dr. Dena Michele Rosko, and I reside in Western Washington, the USA, with my family. God has called me to ecuminister. So I am studying ministry training at the Christian Leaders Institute (Learn more about online Bible classes, Click Here).
My Educational Journey
I received a Ph.D. in Organizational Systems, where I researched the story of the compassionate community of a local faith-based cross-sector social partnership. This ecuministry provides human and social services to our region through collaborating with local churches and government agencies. Previously, I researched my story of end-of-life caregiving with my maternal grandmother, a matriarch of faith in our family, for my MA in Communication and Organizational Leadership Studies. Before that, I received a BA in English/Creative Writing and Communications/Intercultural Mass Media Studies. I wrote and presented my senior thesis about Julian of Norwich, a medieval woman writer, an anchoress in the Catholic church. I showed how her writing style allowed her agency and through the church to help others. These together gave her authority not often granted to women.
Before all this, I spent one year at a Bible College. There, God invited me into prayer and developed my relationship with Him as a young person away from home. However, my grades stunk, and I didn’t feel that I fit in the rules until I made some older friends and served at a local faith-based nursing home. Shortly after that first year, I dated who would become my husband in a long courtship. I often missed the spark of that year and had unfinished business to complete my ministry training.
A Heart for the Lord to Minister
Both research projects share a heart for the Lord to minister to people across traditional group boundaries, including people who might feel ostracized. I share those stories with writing and photography. I knew what it felt like to be excluded. In high school, I enjoyed reaching out to students and staff whom others had counted out. I learned a heart for this from my childhood best friend, who I met in middle school. She was a new student, and I invited her to sit with me. We were best friends until she moved away and maintained our friendship for 20 years, writing letters. Around that time, I also began photography with a four-series flash pink camera from my aunt and write stories and journal entries. I was 12 then. Looking back, I can see God’s hand shaping my spiritual dream, hands, and heart.
As an adult, in-between the degree programs, I worked briefly as a technical writer, a counselor at a church day camp, started a communication consultancy, and provided caregiving for my family. I also ran a photography business as a freelance entrepreneur and fulfilled assignments with a local magazine and regional business newspaper. I worked as a writing tutor for international students and English Language Learners (ELL) for a community college and community relations for a university. These experiences contributed to my spiritual dream, especially to serve God’s church at the local level.
My Spiritual Journey
God saved me at six years old through the pulpit ministry of John 3:16. My dad prayed the “Romans Road” with me at home after church. I felt called by God to preach and teach since I was three. My mom says as a baby. I challenged her to get her to walk right with the Lord. My grandmother attended a Bible school and co-chartered the church of my childhood. I learned early on the importance of a gospel heritage.
However, this walk also came with healing from lengthy attachment abuse and trauma from multiple individuals. For years, I prayed to God to save my life, let me be a blessing, and restore my spark. However, I lacked clarity on what I lost. 1 John 4:18-19 and 2 Timothy 4:14-16 guided me.
Recently, I learned that my childhood best friend died by suicide on Holy Saturday, 2019. Heartbroken, I wondered how I could have better ministered to her. Now her mom and I encourage each other. God is reminding me that the need to minister to others could save a life, ultimately his work and our responsibility. God restored the spark. That spark was God’s call and anointing on my life to encourage others but to always credit God and take time to explain the gospel. It’s not for me to glorify myself but share how God walks with us by welcoming others to his spiritual family. “God sets the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:6).
My Spiritual Dream
With my call to ecuminister, my spiritual dream is to serve as an ordained Ecuminister at a co-housing retreat center. There I will facilitate heritage circles for caregivers and dialogue retreats for churches to better bridge the divides of our times.
My dream is to direct a writing center and start an ecuministry center for church partnerships as a bi-vocational minister. I also plan to publish nine books I’ve written about heritage care, formation, and theology. Also, I desire to teach what I’ve learned in online classes.
Finally, as a mother, I hope to instill the love of God in my son. I want to be a good example and co-write children’s books.
Called to Ecuminister and Ministry Training at CLI
I’m grateful for the local network, mentors, and loved ones supporting me. I’m grateful for the high-quality biblical and ministry training at Christian Leaders Institute. CLI offers tuition-funded programs in a flexible format for working parents. I’ve invested in higher education for years, and I’m relieved at the opportunity not to shoulder the debt.
Additionally, this model removes barriers and dismantles the elitism of so many expensive programs, however of value they may be. Time is of the essence. We’ve much work to do together until the kingdom comes. That work rests in God’s love while we yield to his call. “Many are called, but few are chosen” (Matt. 22:14). I’m grateful for the love of the triune God who saved my life through Jesus and the spark of the Holy Spirit. I thank God that he called me to ecuminister!
I’ve cherished the family-style church of my childhood. I feel called as an Ecuminister of a “We Story” for the gospel with that disposition. Will you pray to God to finish his good work in our callings at CLI?
A Strong Call for Growth and Connection to God
My name is Heather Mich, and I am taking Bible college courses at the Christian Leaders Institute (Learn more about online Bible classes, Click Here). I am from Northern Arizona in the USA. I grew up as an only child to a single mother in Southern California. My family was not very religious, and I had little exposure to religion as a child.
Teenage Years
During High School, I felt something was missing. I started attending a local youth group, volunteering at Vacation Bible School, and accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and was baptized. Soon after, I began to question if I was good enough to be there. God wouldn’t want me, would he? With my family not wanting to hear about my time at church or volunteering, I stopped attending and fell back into feeling empty.
At that time, I did not fully understand God’s grace and love for me as his adopted daughter. I fell into bad relationships and drugs and looked for the wrong attention. I left home and attended college. It did not go well. I developed panic attacks, anxiety, and depression. So, I dropped out less than a year into my program and went back home. I realized that the emptiness and bad relationships had to do with my choices and not feeling like I belonged anywhere. I was angry with God and felt abandoned and cursed.
Marriage and Family
Soon after, I met my husband. He was different than any man I had met before. I actually broke up with him early on because I believed I wasn’t good enough for him. After being together for three years, we became pregnant unexpectedly. We decided to have an abortion which was very painful spiritually. A year later, we were pregnant again, and I was adamant that I would not allow the same thing to happen. Our beautiful daughter was born in 2010, and we married in 2013 in a non-religious ceremony.
A couple of years later, my daughter started Kindergarten, and I was pregnant with our son. One morning as we walked to school, she asked me who God was. This knocked me off my feet. It was like someone had pulled a rug out from under me. All the years of blaming God flooded me with emotion. How was I going to respond? Through my emotion, I told her God created everything and everyone. I told her that I was not sure how else to explain it but that I would ask our close friends who attended church.
God Becomes Real
This started a complete transformation in me as well as in my marriage and family. We began attending church weekly. Each Sunday for the first 3 months, I felt like an imposter. Then one Sunday, our pastor spoke something that I will never forget, “Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum of saints.” With the support of friends and our Women’s Ministry, I found a deeper understanding of God and what Jesus did for me. I began to open up to others and found connections and wise counsel.
A Big Change
In 2018, we went to visit friends who lived in Arizona. Both my husband and I felt a strong call to make a change for our family. We went home and could not stop talking about it. We prayed about it. In October of that year, we made another trip to begin looking at rentals. God led us to a property that was not even fully posted and had just been listed. We drove by and knew this was our home. We received approval easily and moved just before Christmas.
A Personal Walk with God
We plugged into a new church. Over the last four years, we learned and developed our own walks with God and our walk as a family. I have joined small groups and mom’s groups and implemented spiritual habits. I have a thirst to know more and grow more after seeing firsthand that Jesus has given me more than I could ever dream or ask for. We are homeschooling our children and homesteading.
Bible College Courses for Ministry Training
The pandemic never affected our ability to work, which was a huge blessing. It did, however, affect our connections. By late 2020, I knew I needed to find a way to continue growing in my faith. Online church and canceled Bible studies/small groups were a huge blow. I started looking into attending a seminary for Bible college courses. I wanted to use this time to learn more about Jesus and Christianity. Then I found the Christian Leaders Institute. As a work-from-home mother homeschooling her children, I could not afford a University program, nor would I have the time to commute or attend virtually with our schedules. CLI is flexible and free. I can work on my classes at my own pace. I am grateful and truly blessed to have an opportunity to afford and work on a degree with CLI’s Leadership Excellence School.
Spiritual Dream
My spiritual dream is to start a ministry to homeless families. I want to create a farm with tiny homes where we can minister to homeless families that would otherwise be separated due to shelter availability. I want to develop a place where families can feel God’s peace and grace and learn life skills like farming, animal husbandry, cooking, finances, and connection to equip them better to rise from their current situation. Furthermore, I dream of being able to help them start their own businesses or get job placements as they graduate out of our program into permanent housing.
My prayer through my Bible college courses and ministry training at CLI is to grow even more. I want to have a stronger personal walk with God and be prepared by Him for wherever He calls me. To be a testimony that no matter where you have been, God’s love for you overcomes all situations.
Thank you, CLI, for this opportunity and encouragement to step out in this journey.