My name is Mary Morris of the USA, and I am studying at the Christian Leaders Institute for ministry training to be ordained (Learn more about online Bible classes, Click Here). I was born in South Korea. I’m the second of four children. My father accepted the Lord Jesus as his Savior about 4 years before he passed away. My mother used to believe in Buddha but is now Catholic.
When I was 7 years old, I went to the Methodist Church in my neighborhood for the first time. It was there that I heard God’s Word in summer Bible school. I just knew that there was a God and believed in Him. Around the 4th or 5th grade, I saw the Ten Commandments in church and knew that I wasn’t up to God’s standards. I entered Christian Commercial High School, about my sophomore year. I’d been seriously thinking about what true happiness is but didn’t find an answer because I didn’t know Jesus at that time.
Marriage and Salvation
I met and married my husband (a U.S. government employee) in 1986, and we have one child. I emigrated to America in 1993. After having to relocate several times because of his work, we finally moved to South Carolina, where we live today.
One day in 2002, I heard that Jesus is coming soon. When I heard this, my whole life passed in front of my eyes as in a film. I had no confidence that I would go to heaven. After a few days of various thoughts, faith began to come to me. I decided to trust and depend on God who makes everything possible.
So now, I know that I am truly born again by the Holy Spirit. Since being born again, the Lord Jesus became my everything. I received the peace of Jesus and now have joy and satisfaction. I am still learning to be humble, patient, holy, and trust in the Lord with all my heart.
Called to Ministry and Training to be Ordained at CLI
Over the years, it has been suggested several times that I become a woman minister. I have even received a Bible study certificate and studied Systematic Theology but was still unsure. However, after praying to God our Father, I received an answer from Him. God has a plan for me, and I should be ordained. So, I started searching the Internet and found the Christian Leaders Institute. I have decided to study at CLI and to become ordained. Training to be ordained from CLI will give me more confidence to effectively share the gospel.
Currently, I share God’s Word with the Korean people through my YouTube channel and any other way I can. My plans after being ordained at CLI are to serve internationally married women in my area, keep sharing the gospel, and perhaps start a home church in my area.
My spiritual dream and desire are to be loyal to the Lord Jesus! I will keep His words, live a holy life, and keep my faith, so I can be with the Lord Jesus forever.
My name is Terry Gatewood, and here is my journey to ministry study at Christian Leaders Institute (Learn more about online Bible classes, Click Here). Currently, I hail from Columbia, South Carolina, USA. I was born and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. At the age of 12, I moved to Columbus, Ohio, due to my father’s death in 1977. My mother passed the following year, and family in Columbus, Ohio, took in my brother and me. I lived in Ohio until 2014.
At age 48, I retired from law enforcement and moved to Columbia. There I took on a job as a Fire Protection and Communications Maintenance Technician with Richland County School District Two. Law enforcement was a career I thought I would be in until I physically couldn’t work the job, but the Lord had other plans for my life.
My Ministry Study Journey
Currently, I hold an Associate’s Degree in Pastoral Ministry from Ohio Christian University and worked toward my Bachelor’s Degree in Biblical Studies until my financial aid ran out. Due to economic reasons (cops don’t make as much as many think they do), I could not afford to pay out of pocket for college. Sadly, I needed to withdraw about halfway through my program. I love learning and the Lord, so this was a blow to me.
However, last year on my journey to ministry study, I was looking at some local small colleges to enroll in. I wasn’t finding anything that would get me where I needed to be in Biblical Studies. When I was ready to give up, I came across Christian Leaders Institute, which advertised a free education. Of course, still having that cop mentality of suspicion, I almost brushed it off and kept on scrolling, but something (the Holy Spirit, I believe) told me to go back and have a look. I did and liked what I saw but was still a little leery. After some prayer and a “go for it” attitude, I enrolled and began taking classes. What I have learned to this point is on a level with my university education in workload and learning.
My Upbringing and Struggles
Growing up in Texas, my brother and I attended church, but my parents did not. They were both alcoholics but functioning alcoholics who took care of us well. But neither darkened the doorway of a church. They fought from time to time, but there was no physical violence. With all of his flaws, my dad was a good man with compassion and a strong sense of right and wrong. But, he did have a side that was not so good, mainly when others provoked him.
We lived in a rough neighborhood on the east side of Fort Worth in the Polytechnic Heights area. This rough and tumble area molded me into what I became—a fighter and a drinker. I fought all the time at school and home with other kids. When adulthood arrived, so did the beer, whiskey, and womanizing. Sadly, I lived this way for about 25 years of my adult life.
God Called Me
While on patrol one day, I was dispatched to a residence regarding a possible break-in to a garage. It is where I met the woman who would become my wife. She is my rock and best friend. I didn’t know the Lord then. However, since the age of 15 or 16, I knew the Lord was after my heart. I had dreams from time to time of being a pastor, but I always brushed them off. Why would God want someone like me to do His work?
I know now that God works in mysterious ways and puts people in your life for a specific reason. However, it wasn’t my wife, Nicole. But instead, it was her mother, Dawn. When I met Dawn that day, I instantly knew there was something different about her. I had only seen this difference one other time with Pastor Doc Wiggins, one of my instructors in the police academy. Doc was a true man of God, and he had “that thing” about him that made you want to be around him. I liked what they both had, and I wanted it too. However, I didn’t put two and two together until three years later. That’s when Dawn passed away from complications of open-heart surgery. Three weeks after her passing, I finally put the two and two together and accepted Christ on my knees in my dining room.
Answering God’s Call
My wife noticed an almost instantaneous change in me, and so did many other people I was around daily. I now understood God’s calling on my life (remember the dreams?). So, I began to pursue a path to ministry. I am not sure where God wants me, nor in what capacity. However, I remember Pastor Richard Ellis of Reunion Church, Dallas, Texas. He said that serving God isn’t always about being up at a podium preaching the Word. The person cleaning the bathrooms in the church is as important in the eyes of God as the preacher. As soon as we understand everyone in whatever capacity serves the Lord, we function better as a church.
As I continue this journey and mystery, pray that I stay the course set before me. Thank you.
My name is Erica Sosa from the USA, and I am studying to be prepared and equipped to minister at the Christian Leaders Institute (Learn more about online Bible classes, Click Here). I came to accept Jesus Christ into my heart two years ago, in May 2019. This month marks my second anniversary of being a born-again Christian! Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
My Story Begins
No one ever told me about Jesus or God in school. My mom raised us Catholic. However, her hypocrisy, of being one way at home and another way at church, disgusted me. It made me draw away from God until we eventually stopped going to church altogether during my teenage years. Little did I know that God had his eyes on me. He would go on to use the very man that hurt me the most in my entire life: my ex-husband. He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Therefore, he was extremely abusive toward me emotionally, mentally, and verbally throughout our whole relationship.
Struggles
When I was involved in this toxic relationship, from 2013 to 2017, my spirit was beaten and crushed down to nothing. That led me to start seeking love, a sense of worthiness, and validation elsewhere through the form of modeling. The modeling gigs seemed harmless at first, as I was initially only doing fashion shoots. But, over time, I started lowering my standards of what I was and wasn’t ok to do. The next thing I knew, I became a famous fetish/sex industry model on Instagram. I tried living a double life. So, after six months of cheating on my husband, I confessed what I had been doing behind his back. He was devastated but then confessed that he also had a dark secret. He had been unfaithful to me the whole time we were together with his ex-girlfriend.
We went our separate ways soon afterward. He moved to California, and I stayed in Chicago. I continued my highly glamorized and promiscuous Instagram model lifestyle. We did not talk for a whole year. Initially, the modeling, fame, and attention, and compliments from thousands of fans made me feel like I was on top of the world. I had never received so much love and admiration like that in my whole life! But as time went on, I realized how fake it all really was. All the thousands of men only loved my physical appearance. The women that followed me only loved me because I could make them famous too. No one actually loved or cared for me as a person.
Changes
Two years later, I was still working in the sex industry and making lots of money. However, I felt empty inside. So, I started seeking spirituality. I quickly came across all the New Age practices, but none of it really interested me.
However, during my seeking, what I did come across was the concept of “forgiveness and how that sets you free.” So, I decided to call my ex-husband in December 2018 to let him know, “all is forgiven, and I no longer hate him.” He was, of course, shocked. He told me that he was a Christian and started talking to me about Jesus. I had no interest, but he didn’t care. Every time we talked on the phone, he always brought up God. It annoyed me, but the hard walls around my heart started softening and crumbling as time went on. Six months later, in May 2019, I got down on my knees in my bedroom. I cried and prayed to Jesus like never before. A lifetime of struggle and chaos had so deeply broken me. I didn’t want Jesus. I desperately NEEDED Jesus.
Total Surrender and New Life
That same month, I quit my full-time “successful” sex industry modeling career. Convicted to surrender my whole life to Jesus, I gave Him my damaged and broken heart because that’s all I had to offer. I had nothing else. I prayed to Jesus with tears streaming down my face and my heart aching so painfully, “I’m so sorry Jesus, I wish I could give you a better gift, or at least a heart that was in much better condition. You deserve to receive the best of the best quality gift. But I’m sorry, this is all I have to offer you: a tattered and torn heart in terrible shape.”
I didn’t think he would be able to fix my brokenness. I thought I was broken beyond repair. But thank God, He proved me wrong! Jesus took all the broken pieces and remnants of my life. He lovingly and tenderly straightened up the chaotic mess I had gotten myself into.
Prepared and Equipped to Minister by Study at CLI
Through all the classes I have taken at Christian Leaders Institute, I realize that I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me. There is nothing for me to worry about because I am not relying on my own qualifications, skills, and abilities. Instead, I rely on God’s power, strength, and wisdom to lead me and lead through me. I am prepared and equipped to minister after my studies at CLI. After taking the Prayer class, I know that I am the strongest and most powerful on my knees praying.
CLI’s Leadership Excellence School is definitely a tool that God has used to change my life and bless me a hundredfold! I am forever grateful! I definitely feel thoroughly prepared and equipped to go out into the world and fulfill my share of The Great Commission.
Matthew 28:19-20 “And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and the earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”