I am so thankful for the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life.  I didn't grow up in the church, but

came from a home with a very strict belief of the religious sect, where there is so many good and clean things a regular growing child would be able to normally enjoy, that we were denied. As my mother’s interpretation of her faithfully followed religious beliefs, we truly spent the young years of our lives in a very tiny circle of normal and regular way of life in a bubble. At that time, my father had a different Christian belief as they say.

We were under the rule of my father’s quotation he got from his own father which runs like this:     “EARLY TO BED and EARLY TO RISE, MAKES A MAN HEALTHY WEALTHY AND WISE”

So, the drill was to sleep early, and wake up early, like 5:30 in the morning, so we could start our scheduled “Morning Family Worship” before breakfast and preparing to go to the SDA Church school where we were members

We started this daily morning worship with opening hymn, scripture reading with some words of explanation from my mother, then a closing hymn and a prayer from my aunt who was a High School age at that time. 

That’s how the days started daily.  Then, from school, as young as we were, we needed to do our Homework as soon as we got home, help tidy up the house, helped prepare dinner, and after dinner we then got ready for the Evening Family Worship with the same routine.  I also remember sometimes feeling very sleepy to almost not be able to sing the words of the closing hymn.

That was the routine of our existence in our younger years, until I finished my 6th grade, I graduated from Elementary school and then started my high school where I was sent in a different city around 50 miles away from home, and stayed with my mother’s sister 

After that first year in High School, our parents sent us to go to another Church school 5 hours travel from home to live in a dormitory where we would only stay learning about my mother’s Christian belief. That was there, were my two sisters and I were baptized without our parent’s consent because the Pastor asked us if we wanted to be baptized, we said yes, so we were baptized in the river close to the school without our parents’ knowledge, I was 11. Of course, our parents did not like what we did. We never knew we had to let them know, the Pastor did not tell us to at least inform our parents.

Today, I know and feel the great and real difference from where and what knowledge of the True Church is then what I know now.  I feel, we are greatly blessed because we were found by the Missionaries who, through the Holy Spirit, had patiently taught us to learn about The True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints in the fullest sense of the word.  The Greatest one is “THAT THE FAMILY IS FOREVER”.

There are so many marvelous things to learn and to wonder about the Great Love of our Heavenly Father to all of us, No exemption to ALL OF US, AND  to be able to PRAY TO HIM (OUR HEAVENLY  FATHER)  IN THE NAME OF HIS SON JESUS CHRIST.