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I was raised in a very strong Christian home. I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal
Saviour at the age of four. I was baptized in one of the largest churches in America. When
I was four, my family moved to Mexico as missionaries. They served there for four years,
and then we moved back to the states, where they served in a ministry to all of latin
America. During my teen years, I ended up in an extremely bad church situation. what I saw turned me off completely to my parents' denomination. for several years, I was open and interested in several different types of churches. One day while surfing the internet, I came across something on Islam. Initially it caught my attention solely on a cultural level. I began studying it, and through time I gained a strong personal interest in Islam. I began to think that may be this was what I was searching for. Ahmed Deedat's "Is the Bible God's Word" tore apart my faith in the Bible and therefore in Christianity. After several months of reading and studying, I contacted the local mosque and began meeting with some muslims on a weekly basis. I officially did my shahada on October 21. All this was done without my parents knowledge or consent. I began learning and growing as a new muslimah. I soon was a strong practicing muslimn. I said prayers five times a day, fasted during Ramadan, and wore hijab whenever I could. I began establishing friendships with a number of muslimahs, some born muslims and also withe a number of american converts. One evening I had gone to the mosque, and I was not where I was supposed to be for my parents to pick me up. From there, it unraveled and they found out what had been going on in their daughter's life for almost the past year. I was pulled out of school and quit my job. For the best two or three months I was very hard against christianity. My parents cut off all my contacts with any muslims and cut down on my religious activity as much as possible. They prayed and prayed, but I was determined to follow what I believed to be truth. MY family joined a new church, and about a month later the church held a missions conference. A missionary to mustlims came and spoke, and took some time to speak to me about islam. God worked in my heart and I was suprisingly open to what he had to say, but I still was not convinced. For the next few months I struggled, constantly being pulled between Islam and Christianity. I could not accept Christianity. I wanted irrefutable concrete intellectual evidence that proved Christianity and disporoved Islam beyond a shadow of a doubt. It took a long time, but I finally came to the point where I realized I have to accept Jesus as the Son of God and the Saviour of mankind by faith. When I did that, it was amazing how God opened my eyes to all the inconsistencies in Islam and all the evidences of Christianity. When I
came back to Jesus Christ, my dear Saviour upon whom I had turned my back and countef His
precious blood as common, welcomed me back into His loving arms, giving me an incredible
peace and joy that I had not had as a Muslim. While practicing Islam, I struggled with
things that I had never struggled with before, nor have I had problems with those things
since I came back to Christianity. I had severe bouts of depression and many times at
night I would become extremely fearful. I was very insecure and lonely. When I came back
to Jesus by faith, He filled all my needs, including the emotional one. Being a Christian
is the greatest privilege and joy I could ever have. I would not trade my relationship
with Jesus Christ and security of knowing for sure that I am going to heaven through Him. |
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