My Testimony

I was not raised in a Christian home. Recently my mother told me I went to Sunday School before I was six years old, but I have no memory of it at all.  When I was a teenager I had two friends, one of them a Mormon and one of them from a well known denomination and they always used to argue about who the Lord Jesus Christ was. I always used to wonder why they were arguing. For a time I went to church with my friend from the denomination and when she went forward for communion, I wondered why I couldn't go.  One day my friend's father asked me if I had been baptized, and when I said no, he told me I couldn't go to heaven if I wasn't baptized.  Now I know that isn't true, because the thief on the cross wasn't baptized but the Lord Jesus said to him "Today thou shalt be with me in paradise" upon his confession that Jesus was Lord.  From that time on I wanted to be baptized. I went to church with her and her family for quite a while, even went to a youth group, but if I ever heard the gospel, it went in one ear and out the other because I don't remember it.

When I was in my early twenties, I began to wonder where I was going in life, and what the future held. I worked for the provincial government and there was a girl who was known to be a Christian, and believed that marriages were made in heaven. She was filled with an inner beauty that the others did not have. I had a very foul mouth at that time, and one day I took the Lord's name in vain in her presence and she just quietly looked up and me and said "Vicki, please don't swear, I'm a Christian". I have never forgotten that.

I began to wonder about my future, and sought to find out about it in the occult, visiting fortune tellers and the like..  I married and had two children and when they were aged about 5 and 2, I began again wondering about my future. One day an Avon lady came to my door and it occurred to me that maybe I could sell Avon, and so that is how I met the manager, who was always so peaceful and happy. She always was saying Praise the Lord, and so one evening when I was at her place, I asked her what was the source of her peace. She began telling me that she was a Christian, and I thought, oh she's a bible thumper, but she proceeded to tell me all about the rapture and about the terrors of the tribulation and how the Christians were going to be raptured, and everyone else would be left behind to go through it; this was in the 70s, very much before those "left behind" books.  After I left her house, in the car on the way home, through fear, I asked the Lord Jesus to be my Saviour because I wanted to escape the tribulation, and I started going to church with her.  Then, after about a year, she decided to attend the earlier meeting, so I stopped attending, and I fell back to living the way I had before.

Ten years passed, and my husband and I were divorced. One night in 1985 after a particularly bad experience, I went to bed and said "I give up Lord, I can't do it anymore, you do it for me." And 1 year after that I met another man completely by the intervention and plan of God, and we were married 2 1/2 months later.

My husband was a Christian, and I believed I was also because of my experience with the Avon manager. He did not want a working wife, so I quit my job and had lots of time at home to browse his very extensive collection of bibles and Christian books. One of them was called "Beyond the Crystal Ball" by Merrill Unger.  I thought it was a book about the occult, but it soon became clear that it was all about the new age movement, and the gospel of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. I began to be convicted that something was not quite right with me.

I also began at that time to watch a show called the 700 club and one day the gospel was clearly preached and I was convicted in my heart that salvation was about Sin! I knew then that I was a sinner, and that I needed the Lord Jesus' redeeming precious blood to wash me of my sins. In tears I called upon the Lord Jesus to save me from my sins, and NOT from the tribulation..  After that I began attending church where my husband had been going to for 8 years, and a few months later, was baptized.. 

 After that the Lord gave me strong desire to teach Sunday School, and I was able to teach the pre school, and then grades 1-3 for most of the next ten years.. In 2000 we got our first computer, and saw the vast number of Christian sites on the internet.  In August 2002, the Lord gave me firm desire to start this children's bible story site; and he was gracious enough to provide someone to help me get it started with a better knowledge of Front Page then I had.  

Looking back, I can see God's leading and protection all through my life and I praise and thank Him for His Sovereign grace that saved such a sinner as me.  Praise His Holy Name.

Vicki Gross