Hello and Blessings in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. My name is Jacqueline Lambert and I live in a small rural community which is located in the United States which is in Mississippi. I am married with 3 children. I was raised in a Christian home not really understanding what that was. We were raised to go to church, but that was about it. I have 1 sister that knows the Lord and attends church and 1 brother that goes to church and 1 that has turned his back on the Lord, but were saved as children.
Religious beliefs are protected here in the USA although a lot of people either don’t believe the true gospel or don’t live what they once believed.
I was brought up to serve the Lord, however I made my decision to really serve the Lord in my teens. I rededicated my life back to the Lord when I was 23 and that decision was life altering. I was a person who came from the slums of the streets from alcohol every day to sober mentality in Christ. My life has not been the same. I was filled with the spirit of the Lord and he began to show me things and teach me his heart and mind that was so different from what I had been taught by traditional church.
Right now my Ministry dream is to continue to tell as many people about the Lord and show them how once you accept the award of God as law for your life it will and can change you. It is to start a ministry in my community that can become a safe haven for the people by teaching the unadulterated word of God.
I am a assistant pastor in my local church but I wanted this course to be better equipped in my knowledge as well as better equipped to lead the people of God and I found out in order to do that you yourself must be equipped in your walk. In which case I have not told anyone that I am doing this course and will keep it that way until the Lord impresses me to reveal it.
I am pursuing this Ministry course because I want to be available and equipped for whatever the Lord wants me to do. I am not doing it to be something. I’m doing it to so that I will be equipped for whatever job the Lord has me in.
A scholarship for me to continue in this course is essential because I currently only have one income in our household, which leaves our income limited so I would not be able to afford to do any type of course if I had to pay for it.
My prayer is that I will be ready and equipped for whatever the Lord wants for me to do and that I will forever walk close to Him and be in His perfect Will.
My name is Brian Verdugo and I serve as a missionary with Youth for Christ International. I was born and raised in Woodland, California which is near Sacramento. My nuclear family consisted of both parents and one sister who is five years younger than I am. My wife and I were married in 1998 and spent several years living in the Los Angeles area before accepting a ministry Assignment in South Africa with Youth for Christ.
My salvation story is one that saw me go from a person repulsed by anything to do with church until my early 20’s to one who was willing to try it out to one who was excited to go to church to one who leaves home to serve God. The change, of course, came through the power of the gospel. I thought that I knew the stories growing up and thought of them just as that, stories. It wasn’t until I opened the Bible under the guidance of strong teachers that I finally saw that there was something there to be studied; there was truth; there was power. My heart must be about two years behind my mind because after two years of being on fire for the study of God’s word, it finally hit me. If everything in the Bible is true, then there is an infinite chasm between me and God.
I realized my desperate sinful condition and need for a savior. I already knew who that Savior was and that He had died for my sins and risen from the dead. Putting those two truths together, I needed only one more thing, the hardest thing. I chose to lay my life down at the feet of Jesus and recognize Him in my heart for what I already knew Him to be in my mind. It was then that I truly became a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ. It has been a wild ride ever since. One that has led me from the United States to South Africa and now to the small island nation of Seychelles where my wife and I are pioneering Youth for Christ. We train leaders and help grow churches, but the heart of what we do is the evangelism and discipleship of unchurched and unreached youth. I cannot think of anything else that I would rather be doing.
I love to learn, but there are many places in the world where there is a shortage of solid Biblical teaching. Seychelles is one of those places. My wife and I were married young and entered the mission field fairly early in life. Though both of us have learned a lot between our church experience and training in YFC, neither of us have any kind of degree or ordination to show for it. The fact that we can change this through CLI is a tremendous blessing and the fact that the cost is amazingly low really helps a couple like us who work on a missionary budget. CLI not only presents the opportunity to learn, but also provides me with some credibility as a servant of the Lord. CLI is also becoming an asset to our ministry here in Seychelles as solid Biblical training is another goal of Youth for Christ Seychelles. We are recommending CLI to many leaders in Seychelles. Our own pastor has recently applied and is anxious to start the CLI courses.
Though I don’t work in any one church, I identify myself most with the term Pastor. As I stated, my ministry is heavily focused on evangelism and discipleship and I am deeply involved in this ministry day to day. I have had the privilege of seeing many young people come to the Lord, but I don’t feel that I am a gifted evangelist, I am just doing what every Christian is expected to do. I feel that my strongest gifts come in the form of teaching and shepherding, therefore I feel that I am gifted in the mold of a pastor. You could say that I am a pastor of unchurched youth.
Seychelles faces many spiritual challenges. The foremost problem that I see is a lack of trained pastors and Biblical teachers. Many churches stray out of bounds doctrinally and people are very confused as to what the Bible teaches about salvation, spiritual gifts and the work of the Holy Spirit. Fortunately, we have the support of many churches in the United States and our local church here in Seychelles is becoming a shining city on a hill when it comes to solid Biblical teaching. We have many people from this church serving as volunteers and board members in Youth for Christ Seychelles. Youth for Christ Seychelles has been given access to secondary school campuses through our Campus Life program. The simplest way I can describe Campus Life is that it is a crazy youth group type atmosphere with loud music and the Bible being presented in a way that unchurched youth can appreciated and understand it.
My Call
My name is Phyllis Solomon and I am 39 years old. I live in southeast Georgia in the U.S. with my amazing husband of 14 1/2 years and our three children. I am blessed to live in a country where I can openly share my devotion to Christ with whomever I want. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean they reciprocate the offering of love. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that Christians are judgmental hypocrites. My call is to depict before my peers, family, and loved ones the true life of a believer—someone whose not perfect, but has experienced the grace and favor of Jesus Christ through no merit of my own.
My Story
My first encounter with Christ occurred when I was 6 or 7 years old. I was a very shy child and grew up in a very poor neighborhood with my mom and 5 siblings. Around age 5, my father and mother divorced. Nothing special, since 50% of marriages fail. But my father was a pastor of several churches. He also had 3 different families. My siblings and I represented the third. After divorcing, my mom moved us into my grandmother’s home. It had 2 bedrooms and a kitchen. That was it! No bathroom, indoor plumbing, heat, or air conditioner! We were super poor.
We lived in those conditions for a long time. When I turned 7, I went to the library where I picked up a book about cats. On the front cover sat a perfect little red-tabby kitten. I fell in love on the spot. I ran all the way home to tell my mom that I wanted that kitten. And as you may have guessed, she told me she didn’t have to money to purchase one.
My heart sank. And then something amazing happened. My mom turned back to me and said, “I can’t buy that kitten for you, but if you pray and ask the lord, he will bless you with it.” And I did just that. For two weeks I marched around my little home crying and praying for a red-tabby kitten. Two weeks from that day, one showed up on my back step. He looked exactly like the picture I saw in the book I read.
In that moment, God sewed a seed in my heart that He was real, His Word was real, and He was mindful of me. I gave my life to him at age 13 and have been on this Christian journey since.
My Dream
My dream is to become a minister of the Gospel and to share the love of the Gospel with people through my home church and our outreach ministries. Especially young people. Currently, I lead praise and worship during service, work in the nursery, am a women’s ministry leader, work on the technology team, youth ministry team, young adult ministry team, and am the vice president of our non-profit out reach program. A full plate! But, I love it. I am definitely a youth leader.
Preparation
Recently, I felt the Lord’s call to become a minister. Just as 2 Tim, 2:15 tells us, I want to study to show myself approved. My first thought was to go to seminary. But with 3 pre-teens and debt from my previous degree, seminary was not an option. Thanks to CLI, I have another option.
Ministry
I live in a college town and my church is getting ready to start a college ministry. This is very important to me since I’ve been praying for a chance to encourage young adults in the same way I was encouraged at that age. After working in an HIV clinic and reaching HIV victims, I learned that everyone has a story. Some have been hurt, betrayed, and taken advantage of at a very young age. Everyone needs love and Christ is the ultimate love. Please pray fro me and my co-laborers as we set out to do the work of the Lord.