Struggling Through--part 3

One of the huge ways God showed His faithfulness to me after I began following Him in 1996 was in the area of work. For several years, I had worked at various video stores around town, and most of them carried porn. After coming to Christ, I no longer wanted to go into the back room where this stuff was located, but sometimes it was necessary. Like when my manager wanted me to go dust the shelves--pretty hard to do this when you've got your eyes closed to keep from seeing all the boxes.

I didn't believe God wanted me to do this job anymore, but I didn't know where else I might work. I took a walk and ended up at a Blockbuster Video store, where they didn't carry porn. I ran into an old friend whom I had worked with years before, and that same night, as I was praying, I was basically offered a job. Wow.

A year later, when I really felt like I needed to get out of the video store business, I listened to an African-American customer come in and basically prophesy over me that I wouldn't be doing this work for more than another month. Soon after, my church received a fax from a local voice mail business, looking for a person to work for them. I followed it up and received the job.

When that business switched its location to Spokane, they offered to pay my moving expenses to come with them or pay some severance money. I took the latter, believing that God still had work for me at my church and something else planned. I went on my first short-term mission trip with Teen Mania (though I was 24) to Alaska for a month, where I did drama ministry with a large group to help Alaskans come to Christ. The trip changed my life (or God did, rather), and I came back knowing that I wanted to dedicate my life to making Christ known, rather than trying to sell anything else.

But how? I knew that I didn't want to raise support again, after having just raised short-term support from my church. I had no idea what I could do to position myself for ministry with missions, except pray. For more than 3 months, I was basically unemplyed, looking for anything. With my funds dwindling, one afternoon I got on my face and just begged the Lord to help me. The phone rang just then, while praying, and my pastor offered me some temporary work, filling in for a secretary who was sick. That same secretary had recommended that I call a radio station's job hotline, which then led to the first of 3 interviews with Firestone. After I was hired by them a few weeks later, I learned that it was my phone skills (learned at the voice mail company) that helped push me over the finish line to get the job. They heard these phone skills because I was filling in as the secretary at the church when they called to check with my pastor as a reference.

I thank God for having been able to work with this org for 7 years now. Hope some of you reading this will consider joining our work to bless Muslims with Christ.