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.
Rory Tonkin – New Zealand
My name is Rory Tonkin and I come from New Zealand. It is an amazing country with boundless freedom, however sometimes freedom may come at a price. Ignorance and arrogance sometimes seems rife and any talk of Christianity is often laughed at or ridiculed. However their are many Christians and the church community is still strong nonetheless, it just feels more hidden than other countries. Their are plenty of opportunities for ministry in New Zealand with great numbers of spiritually broken people and many youth growing up into gangs.
Growing up in a small town called Motueka I went to a Catholic School where I learnt about Jesus and grew in my beliefs, but always struggled with certain hypocrisy and teachers who I felt were very unjust. I knew about religion back then but never knew about nor had a relationship with Christ. For years I held onto my beliefs but never delved deeper until I met my now Wife who is a Christian and encouraged me to come to church with her. I refused at first but eventually relented. At first I didn’t feel comfortable there and felt many people would be judging me due to the way I looked with many tattoos. I did grow to love her church and continue to go there to this day. The time I fully gave myself to the lord was when I was invited to an Easter camp. The whole experience was amazing and the speakers blew me away leading me to rethink everything I’d ever believed. One of the main speakers there was also surprisingly a man who had been a great father figure to me growing up and had taught me many great things.
My ministry dream is to begin to work with Prisoners, either in juvenile detention centres or full adult prisons. I also want to work with troubled youth on the path to becoming gang members, I feel like I most identify with being a Pastor of a Church but would never forget my main focus which is to work with the forgotten members of society.
The key experience in my life which prompted me to pursue ministry would be spending time in Africa (Namibia and South Africa) with YWAM. Just feeling a newfound purpose for my life and not following my old ways just living trying to accumulate material things and constantly searching for pleasures for myself. Learning there is so much more to life than this. The understanding that what is often portrayed to the World as the “good life” everyone strives for and chases often will lead to heart break, despair and depression, You may accomplish so much but without God in your life, you may never know peace.
The unique challenges in my area are really just the feelings towards Christianity and the negative stigma often driven by the media. It can be hard as a Christian trying to break through barriers where people have been taught for a long time not to believe and feel that if they do start to they will be ridiculed by there closest peers.
My local church has been very supportive in my ministry calling, encouraging and praying for my wife and I while we were involved in mission work in Africa. Due to the distance of it to where me and my wife live we don’t have take part in a great deal of the extra curricular activities that are happening but are making a great effort lately to be involved where we can.
A scholarship at CLI is extremely important to my ministry dream as it gives me a chance to complete Ministry training in New Zealand, learn more than I could imagine and allow me to follow my calling of one day becoming a Pastor. If anyone could pray for me and my current ministry dream of working with Prisoners just for more opportunities and for open hearts. Also prayers for open hearts for my family, friends and all others I come across during the rest of my life.
My name is Travis Burris and I am from the small town of Murray, Kentucky in the United States of America. I first began my journey with God and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ when I was 11 years-old. My best friend at the time was very active in a Baptist church and invited me to come along. I thought nothing of it spiritually, but just wanted to go because I would be around other kids I knew. After speaking to the pastor about Jesus Christ I experienced a false profession. However in the year of 2004, I was born again during a revival at a United Baptist church where I later became a member by baptism.
After going through years of church service, revivals, and gatherings with other Christians I can relate mainly between Pastor, Evangelist, or Youth Minister. Since I was recently laying on my couch and the Holy Spirit startled me with the words of “Preach the word, be instant in season and out of season.” Therefore I have been led through God and the Holy Spirit to spread the gospel not only in my community, but also throughout the state of Kentucky and hopefully into our nation and world. Of course within my own country like many others, there are sizable amounts of nonbelievers and those who are lost without God and Jesus Christ. Satan has blinded them from the glorious possibilities of eternal life with Jesus Christ. I know this because at one time I was that same person. I was mixed up in drugs, alcohol, my family disowned me for many years and I was lower than the bottom of the barrel. As Paul states in the New Testament “I am the chiefest of sinners,” and I felt the same way. I knew there was a heaven and a hell and the road I was on was spiraling quickly to the fiery pits of hell. As I laid within the darkness of Satan’s grasp, luckily as my hand was reaching up for help, God was reaching down and pulled me out of that wicked darkness.
My ministry dream is to either develop a church solely based on God’s love that will be more active with the community and surrounding area. I would also like to reach out into farther countries who are less fortunate to hear the gospel and do not have the same freedom as we do here in America. God’s word is to be heard by all men and women, not just the select few in a small area.
I pursued this ministry course and learning opportunity through CLI because of my dear uncle who had recently lost his wife from passing on to be with our Lord and Savior. He is a devout Christian and pastor at a small church in Oklahoma and is very knowledgeable in theology, scripture, doctrine, and walking with God. After my experience with the Holy Spirit moving through me to “Preach the word” my uncle was the first person who came to mind to ask what is my first step. He led me to CLI after he has participated in the courses as well.
I can only humbly ask for everyone’s prayers for me to receive the proper guidance, knowledge, and wisdom to not become a well-known pastor or evangelist, but to be a spiritual leader that people in my community can count on to save souls from the clutches of Satan.
In my community, the Salvation Army has been a large influence to me by sharing their gracious love for others within the community. By feeding people, giving them shelter, or even reaching out to nursing homes and preach the gospel has truly inspired me to become more involved within the ministry. After I spoke with the Captains of the local core, they highly advised me to continually pray and to stay within God’s word because this would be one of the greatest journeys of my life. And so far, it has been nothing less than that.
Lastly, one of the largest reasons I have chosen this path to the ministry is not only to be a “soul saver,” but also for my son. Since he is only 2 years old now he has not reached the age of accountability, but he is already aware of church, and who Jesus is. I want to be able to show him how to be a Godly man in life, not just in a church setting.