Ministry Calling Gift Of Time For Jim Fleurent
Hello fellow CLI students! I am Jim Fleurent from the United States. I am a Christian that has received the ministry calling gift of time!
My coming to the Lord started in 2011. The two years prior to that were challenging due to my body wearing out with bad hips and knees, but the biggest challenge was to come. I was brought up Catholic but strayed away in my teens. Believing more in science than God, I referred to faith as a myth. I have been blessed with a wonderful family with life’s usual issues. Then, I was struck with MCL, mantle cell lymphoma, a bone and blood cancer which was diagnosed as stage 4 with three to six months to live. We were blessed with good insurance and great doctors who got me into the City of Hope, a national cancer center. My belief in science was not able to save me, but our great God, who gives the science knowledge to us, was!
I endured a regimen of four chemo sessions a day for a week then resting for two weeks then repeating the schedule until six months later I received a stem cell transplant. Now in 2018, I am alive and glorifying Jesus.
Here is how God revealed faith to me: Seven days before my stem cell transplant, I awoke at about four in the morning with a terrifying dream, little did I know it was an epiphany. I was on the edge of a vortex, dark and spinning downward, and as I peered in, it dragged me to the bottom. It was ice cold and dark and I could not see, but I could feel souls there, empty and agonized, full of hate, despair, and pain. I screamed out and no one heard me there. In the hospital room, my wife, who spent every day with me in the hospital (sleeping in a chair) heard me and held me. As I awoke I cried. This dream continued for six nights with the same vision, me waking terrified, and my wife Lori consoling me. Then on the morning of my stem cell transplant, the seventh day, at four in the morning, I dreamed again. But this time it was a white vortex spiraling upwards and as I peered in it drew me up to a warm, blinding white place. I could feel it was full of love, hope, beauty, and peace. The first thing that came to me was to call out for my mother and then a friend of my wife who had recently passed away. They could not hear me because I was not to be among them at this time. I sat up as my wife was stirring, and I saw, as clearly as I could see her, Jesus at the foot of my bed in robes and, oddly enough, short hair, and I knew he was God. He spoke two words, “You’re alright.” My wife came to me, and I told her of this vision. She held me and I prayed. At nine that morning, the doctors came in my negative pressure room and injected my Hickman valve with two million stem cells.
I have received a ministry calling gift of time and now training at CLI. I have gotten better and my cancer is in remission. I was baptized at Harvest Church in California. I found Christian Leaders Institute online and I am working on my degree. Life is good, and I try each day to be the best for Christ that I can be. Thank you, CLI, Henry, and all your staff for leading me to help others in Christ. There is much more to this story and much more of it to come, God willing.
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Bible Education Free
I am a Canadian and am excited to receive CLI’s Bible education free. I was born in Sarnia, Ontario. I am the fourth of five children (my older brother died of heart complications at about a month old). My parents were divorced by the time I was 4 years old. My 2 older sisters (aged 6 and 8 at the time) went to live with my dad as he felt they were old enough to care for themselves and therefore less work for him. As my younger sister and I were so young and unable to care for ourselves, my dad didn’t want us and so we went to live with my mom. We tended to move around a lot as my father changed jobs a lot and my mother moved as well in order to stay close to my older sisters. Shortly, after my parents’ divorce, my mother met my step-father.
As a means of childcare, my mother took us every Sunday to the local Baptist church. It was there that I found a different kind of love and support than that which I received at home. I became a Christian at a young age (grade 2) in Sunday school and was baptized and sought church membership at the age of 13. I felt God’s calling at a young age and as a teenager dedicated my life to do what God led me to do.
As life tends to happen, I grew away from the Lord in my teen years and early adult life. I moved into a group home and was introduced to a different lifestyle than I was used to of smoking, drugs, and alcohol, but God never gave up on me or left me. He eventually pulled me back to him and with acceptance and love for me. At the age of 20, I met my husband (who at the time was not a Christian). We married shortly afterward and had 2 children. My daughter Madison (who passed away December 19, 2017, at 18 years old from complications of epilepsy) was special needs (she had high functioning autism and epilepsy). My son Derek is 22 years old and has numerous learning and physical special needs.
Currently, I serve within my church in various capacities: as a greeter, an usher, on the finance committee and as a teller (counting the weekly offerings). However, I feel God is calling me to one of two ministries, either ministering to special needs adults or with parents who have lost children. I have experience in both these areas being a parent of special needs children and also losing a daughter at such a young age. I feel God allowed these experiences in my life so that I can minister to and be a blessing to other people who have had similar experiences. At this time, my church is working towards starting a grief support program. Along with one of our pastors, my husband and I are looking to facilitate this program to support people within our church as well as others in the community.
I believe that learning more about God and his word will be a good foundation to be able to support either ministry that God calls me to. So I searched and found Christian Leaders Institute offering online Bible education free. As I prepared to take courses with CLI, my church has been an encouragement and has also committed to being available to answer any questions I might have. CLI’s Bible education free is important to me as I cannot afford at this time to be able to pay for Bible College. We have to support our adult special needs son. Bible education free at CLI allows me to concentrate on my studies without having to worry about how I will pay for it. God always provides a way for his plans!
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Joey says of his Youth Pastor dream: “My spiritual dream is to write books that answer questions for people who are afraid to ask someone in person and to become a Youth Pastor…”
Youth Pastor Dream
My name is Joey Sanders and I have a writing and a Youth Pastor dream. I live in a great town called Pella here in Iowa. Being a Christian Leader here is amazing because I get to be involved with people and I have a lot of resources to go to in this community. My wife and I moved here in June of 2018. We both attend Third Church here in Pella and it is such a great congregation. So many opportunities to help are always available.
My childhood was okay. I started going to Bible school on Sundays and Wednesdays when I was six years old at the First Baptist Church in Centerville, Iowa. I was exposed to the knowledge of God at a young age. My mother did not have very much knowledge in her life. While I was with my mom, we were exposed very little to God. In 2003, when I was about 7 or 8 years old, my brothers and I were taken away from our mom and placed with our dad on Christmas Eve. It was a very confusing time. My dad was great while I was growing up. Due to him having to work to support three kids by himself, he always worked. I was the one that had to keep my brothers in check. My oldest brother, Tim, has autism. My little brother Xavier also has autism. I am the middle child. Growing up, my dad sought to keep the Spirit of God alive in our home. Somedays it felt like God had left when times were dark, but we always managed to get through everything no matter what it was because “With God all things are possible.” – Matthew 19:26.
My spiritual dream is to write books that answer questions for people who are afraid to ask someone in person. I also have a high school Youth Pastor dream to help them become wise and grow in their faith so they do not let their faith slip away. Even though I grew up knowing God, my faith still slipped.
I gave my life to Jesus through baptism on August 7th, 2011 at the First Baptist Church in Memphis, Missouri. However, I did not follow the Christian lifestyle. I was angry, bitter, resentful, and lustful. I was acting up in school and disrespectful toward my parents. When I was seventeen, I left my dad’s house to move in with my mom back in Iowa. Almost a year later, when I was a senior in high school, my girlfriend at the time gave birth to a baby girl. I finished high school a semester early and my faith started to falter. I always had the problem of “fitting in” with others. The people I was around daily wanted to get drunk, do drugs, and smoke cigarettes. I started smoking cigarettes at 10 but had stopped after my dad caught me. I went back to smoking at 18 years old. I was never big into the drug scene but I did get hooked on alcohol. In 2014, I moved back to my dad’s to live with my oldest brother to help him out. By then, my daughter’s mom and I had split for good. That is when my whole world started spiraling out of control.
I realized I needed Christ to live. This is when my wife and I started going together. She has always known God and even knew more about Him then I did. She gave me an ultimatum and told me, “I am wanting to do things God’s way in my life and if you cannot do the same, then we cannot be together.” I thought about it and did some reflection on my life and I thought maybe I should give it a shot. We were living in Centerville, Iowa at the time and started to attend Drake Christian Church. We talked about moving to better ourselves, so I started to apply for jobs and was accepted at a job in manufacturing in Pella.
Since my wife and I have been together, we tried to conceive but we were not able to do so. After we moved here to Pella, my wife and I prayed separately about conceiving. Three weeks after we moved, we found out that she was expecting. It took us over a year to conceive. We are expecting our baby girl Journie Renee Dawn Sanders on March 22, 2019. God has blessed us and that is when I decided I wanted to help others who have been down the path I have been. I want to bless others by sharing the gospel so they can follow Jesus because He is a life changer!
I heard on a Christian radio station one day about Greg Laurie’s Harvest Ministries and I signed up to get his daily devotionals in my email. He has been a huge influence in keeping me straight with my walk with Jesus. I also follow the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I took a class called “Know Jesus” through this association and got a greater knowledge of who Jesus really is.
Free training to realize my Youth Pastor dream is important because I cannot financially afford to learn more. I want to go forward with my calling from God to serve Him. I am going through this training at Christian Leaders Institute to get ordained as a minister to follow my Youth Pastor dream. I pray and bless anybody who comes to this training at CLI to get the training they are looking for and to be successful with it. May God bless you always!
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