Mission Revival Preacher
My name is Jacob E. Mitchell and I am called to be a mission revival preacher. I was born December 19th, 1985 in Newark, Delaware in the United States of America. I currently live in Cancun, Mexico. I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ at a very young age through my grandfather. My grandfather has always gone to church and was very active in the church helping others out in any way. He taught me that it is important to do as God has asked us in all areas of life such as giving tithes to the church. He also shared how God expects us to live and that he has a plan for each and every one of us here on earth. In this aspect, I would attend church with passion and at 8 years old I asked God to enter my heart and accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior. I was baptized in a Christian church. My grandfather many years later became a pastor in a Baptist Christian church. And I was very excited for this as I dreamed to become a preacher since I was 8 years old. When I found out that he became a preacher, it truly inspired me that I could also with the Grace of God become a preacher despite all I have done in my life.
The greatest moment in my life that re-prompted me to the calling to be a preacher that has been following and calling me for so many years was a very wonderful Christian woman that became my fiancée. I had tried to do things by my actions, my will, and my desire and failed every time. After meeting my fiancée, she guided me back to God and back to church. She helped me with my prayer life and in all this, my relationship with the Lord became stronger and the calling to be a preacher increased. I could hear God calling me again. He always had been calling me, but I was unable to hear him as I was not in a good personal relationship with Jesus. Now at 32 years old, I feel the pulling on my heart from God and the Holy Spirit more than ever to be a mission revival preacher.
Living in another country is different than the United States and I do not speak the native language very well but enough to express myself. In the area I live in Mexico, there is a great population of the natives that do speak English. So for me, I become very nervous when I attempt to speak to the locals in Spanish since my vocabulary is not strong enough at this moment. But I know that with the power of the Holy Spirit I can do anything and my fear of preaching in Spanish or in English in another country is going away. My goal and dream are to become a mission revival preacher here in Mexico appealing to all that seek God. I hope that my personal life experience will help others with any problems they have and with help from the Lord Jesus Christ. My local church is a very active church and I have made friends with the younger group leaders and pastors here. I am blessed that they are happy and willing to assist me in my calling to become a preacher.
The scholarship with Christian Leaders Institute will be a true blessing as I am unable to attend any Christian college. I do not have the Spanish vocabulary to do so or the money as the pay in Mexico is not anywhere the same as the U.S.A. With CLI, I can attend the school here online and on my schedule so that I can fulfill God’s calling for me to be a preacher. With all I have done thus far with my classes, I have been inspired and tested with my faith, my dedication and also with my academics. CLI classes have been exciting and have blessed my relationship with the Lord. My dream of being a Preacher can come true with CLI even though I am living in another country.
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My name is Kate, and I was born in 1979 in the UK, and I am British. My mother married my father when they were both very young, and they had two other children besides me. The marriage broke down when I was two years old, and my mother left my father leaving my two sisters behind.
From there my mother married twice on her third marriage everything went downhill rapidly for me in my childhood. I was a victim of child sex abuse and had very little respect for myself and attracted relationships that didn’t serve me well in my young adulthood. I entered many domestic violence relationships that would lead to me drinking and taking drugs to blot out my reality and escape the pain and shame I was feeling from the past childhood experiences.
By the age of 19 years old I had two small children, and I was a single parent who had to face the world alone and provide for two children as well as myself. In 2001 I started my career in food manufacturing, and through sheer hard work and determination I was promoted four times in 3 years and became a quality control manager for Birdseye products.
Unfortunately, I became a victim to my bosses manipulating ways, and this leads me to leave my manufacturing career behind. I retrained as a registered childminder and started working from home and providing childcare to working parents. It was from this that I started to invest more in my education and enrolled in college to take my child psychology diploma.
From there and a whole host of other training I started to work with children with behavior problems and those who have lived in domestic violence relationships. The results were amazing and to be able to turn the lives around of children was an amazing feeling. After eight years of that career, I decided I wanted to go a step further and help adults instead, so I re-trained in adult psychology and trained to become a life coach.
Over the past seven years, I have helped domestic violence victims, sex trafficking victims and people with a whole host of fears from writing their books to rising their self-awareness. After having so many success stories, I invited people to share their stories in a published book and launched it out to the world. The book became a #1 international bestseller and 17 more books followed by co-authoring and solo authoring my books. I had built an international publishing company, made 400 become best selling authors and went on to be publishing consult to place other publishers in the world. I had also been named one of the top life coaches in the world by an award-winning film director.
My walk with God started 2 and half years ago, little did I know what he truly wanted me to do until it became clear. He placed the vision in my mind and heart to help those that the world forgets about, the people who are lost in a vicious circle of offending crimes and end back up in prison with no direction to their futures. So, I obeyed and enrolled myself into university to take a degree in psychology and criminology which starts in 2018. Up until now, I have just studied the word of God for my self, not to teach and so I started researching into bible colleges.
Upon my research of bible college’s, I came across CLI and here I am today.
My ministry goal is to obey what God has placed into my heart and to go take his teachings to those who are held within prisons walls, to help teach them that there is a way out and you can change your life through God’s teachings and God’s word. With also the skills to enable me to help people to move forward to place structure into their lives to become highly aware of their behaviors and beliefs so they can change their reality.
Upon research, I became aware that in the UK only 33% of British people believe in God’s word. So, we are one of the countries that need more teachers to help teach God’s word and by taking this into a place where there are people that are stuck in a cycle of crime it will reduce crime, bring up that 33% and place a new lease of light within the prison system and help people redeem themselves from their past sins.
I am looking forward to working with my local mentor who runs my local church and to hear his wisdom and perceptions on his call to ministry and how he came from taking a law degree and working as a solicitor, to becoming a Reverend of my local church. It’s like God is sending him my way to be my mentor with his background being law and my future working with criminals. I have an interview with a charity called New Bridge in Feb 2018 to enable me to start my work experience and start to connect with offenders inside.
I think CLI is vital to my education on how to teach God’s word to people and that is why the scholarship is extremely important to me. I am willing to work hard, study and work for the classes the best of my ability. I completely respect the work that goes into CLI and to all the contributing partners who donate to allow others to become educated themselves. Therefore I became a contributing partner myself.
Please pray for the people within the prisons, and may my presence in their lives help them find the change they need.
Ministry Call Journey
My name is Joshua Stromberg and I am on a ministry call journey. My faith started as a young boy, in Alberta, Canada. I knew of God growing up, going to church every Sunday, going to Bible camp every summer, and eventually going to youth group when I was older.
Unfortunately, I didn’t actually know God myself. I knew what to say, I sometimes had read my Bible, and would pray sometimes, but not really. As I grew older, the devil got more and more of a foothold in my life, and I moved away, into the world, when I was 16.
I was rebellious, knowing there was God and that Jesus had died on the cross for me. I didn’t understand it though. Through my later teens and early twenties, I lived for myself, partying and being a hard working stoner (pot smoker). Even after I married my beautiful wife at 21, who I met at 19, I was still living a self-centered life. We moved up to the small town I had left, a few months before we wed. That’s where God really started knocking.
After my son was born, my parents started taking him to church, which I totally agreed with as I knew that was what the Lord would want. In between, in the couple years before my daughter was born, I stopped drinking to get drunk. After I realized it was getting in the way of my relationship with my wife, I completely stopped drinking for a year. My daughter was born in the new year of 2015, I was still smoking pot daily aside from a few times of stopping for a month or so every now and then. She started going to church with my parents too.
So then comes around two years ago, 2016 on my ministry call journey. I started working for a family friend, who is also a board member at church. He prays every day before we start work and lives out a real faith daily. I know something’s missing, as I always have, but now I really know. Over the summer, I kept getting an inclining to go to church. During November that year, while we were out hunting, my unsaved buddy asked why I don’t go to church too since my kids do every Sunday. I didn’t have an answer. A few weeks later, I started going back to church.
Over the next half a year even though I had rededicated my life to Christ, I wasn’t living it out. I was still holding on to things. I was still smoking weed daily, drinking beer a little out of moderation, still addicted to porn, and still had an obscene tongue. Summer 2017 rolled around, and I knew I wanted to change and the Holy Spirit wanted me to change. So I started really trying, but mostly in my own strength. Baptism Sunday was coming up, so I put my name on the list the weekend before.
After I was baptized, I really started trying harder to change. I swore less, didn’t smoke as much weed, would only drink a few beers a week, only tripped up on porn every so often, and felt guilty about it all. You could almost say I felt condemned. During the late summer, I told God I really wanted to change. I stepped out in faith and started raising my hands to worship Him at church. I started turning praise music on more and more, I cut the beer intake to almost none and cut right down on pot. Cutting down on all that was hard as my wife didn’t want to stop.
In the fall, I started praying for His strength to not watch porn. But with me still not surrendering daily pot, I was leaving room for guilt and condemnation, and every so often the devil would use that and then comes more guilt and condemnation. Thankfully, I learned that guilt and condemnation doesn’t come from God. So I started praying about that as well on this ministry call journey. I’ve been porn free and loving it since November. As I claimed Christ’s victory over that giant, the Holy Spirit started to show me other areas in my life that He wanted to conquer. I started 2018 afresh, anew, substance-free, addiction free, condemnation free, justified in Christ. As I dove deeper into the Word, I started a 21 day fast and prayer with the church. God spoke to me in a dream and confirmed a feeling/calling to go to Bible school (an inclination I’ve had for many years, weird right?). That invoked a lot of prayer about it, as with a family and long hours away from the closest school, it seemed impossible.
God is the God of the impossible. After much prayer and looking into other schools (some with tuitions of 10k+!!), I came across Christian Leaders Institute. One would say that CLI has been a Godsend on my ministry call journey! It could have been years before I started ministry training. After starting the scholarship class I’ve really enjoyed the insight and calling to ministry I have learned. My pastor is excited about it, as is the friend (now mentor) I worked for in 2016. I look forward to pursuing further ministry training through CLI and pursuing ministry through avenues the Lord leads me to.
In short, I once was lost, but now I am saved.
Learn about minister ordination at Christian Leaders Alliance.