I’ve been in the United States since I was nine years old. My parents actually got saved in the Philippines when Steve Murrell (a cofounder of Every Nation) and his team first started to minister. My dad was a pastor for a season before returning to his calling to business. When the opportunity to come to America arrived, my parents left everything including my siblings and I with my relatives. They migrated to America and we followed two years later in October 2001. They came for work and a better life and naturally began attending our sister church in Van Nuys, California.  

It’s expected that when you migrate to America, nothing is going to be easy or handed to you, but it also promises you that if you work hard you can achieve, have, and do anything. So I worked hard, lived my life as best as I could—following the rules, being kind, trying to be perfect at all my responsibilities. I had to figure out everything for us in terms of schooling or anything foreign to my parents.

I was doing well until a season came when everything was failing. People disappointed me and the burden of having it all together got too heavy. So I lost my trust and my hope—it affected my sense of identity, security, and joy. I became very depressed and I couldn’t share it with anyone. I was hurting all the time and nobody understood me or saw me because I had to maintain that standard of perfection. Until that started breaking down too. I soon started to rebel and allowing myself to be selfish, giving up on my responsibilities and living a double life. I was still in church but I served so much that I avoided going to service. I ended up in a very ungodly relationship that I kept denying and hiding.

On my nineteenth birthday, God broke into my heart. He asked me if I loved him, and by his grace, I said yes. I knew that meant surrendering my relationship and life. I ran to my life group leader and told her the whole truth of what I had been hiding. Everyone in our group was so loving. They prayed for me and helped me break that relationship. I was still heartbroken until God started healing me making me face my fears in victory after victory. Finally, I experienced God’s joy and felt something had been lifted from me. He wiped the slate clean! After that, I wanted to be a part of his vision to see the broken and lost people healed and found. I wanted to give every person I knew and the opportunity to experience this real God wanting to give real love, freedom and joy.

I started seeking training tools to evangelize and lead more effectively. I’d already been hosting two small groups at school and church and evangelizing using the tools we had. In my junior year, during the call to ministry moment at the Every Nation Campus Conference, I felt that I was called but didn’t respond. I wasn’t ready for the commitment. But I knew that the things they were saying were things that God had already instilled in me. My senior year, at the next conference in Oregon, I finally stood up in response to the call and was ready to do whatever it took to make Jesus known in this current and future generation, and the world.

This is what wakes me up in the morning: knowing that the gospel is true, is good news, and that this is the kind of God that people really need to experience.