My name is Brian Verdugo and I serve as a missionary with Youth for Christ International. I was born and raised in Woodland, California which is near Sacramento. My nuclear family consisted of both parents and one sister who is five years younger than I am. My wife and I were married in 1998 and spent several years living in the Los Angeles area before accepting a ministry Assignment in South Africa with Youth for Christ.
My salvation story is one that saw me go from a person repulsed by anything to do with church until my early 20’s to one who was willing to try it out to one who was excited to go to church to one who leaves home to serve God. The change, of course, came through the power of the gospel. I thought that I knew the stories growing up and thought of them just as that, stories. It wasn’t until I opened the Bible under the guidance of strong teachers that I finally saw that there was something there to be studied; there was truth; there was power. My heart must be about two years behind my mind because after two years of being on fire for the study of God’s word, it finally hit me. If everything in the Bible is true, then there is an infinite chasm between me and God.
I realized my desperate sinful condition and need for a savior. I already knew who that Savior was and that He had died for my sins and risen from the dead. Putting those two truths together, I needed only one more thing, the hardest thing. I chose to lay my life down at the feet of Jesus and recognize Him in my heart for what I already knew Him to be in my mind. It was then that I truly became a follower and disciple of Jesus Christ. It has been a wild ride ever since. One that has led me from the United States to South Africa and now to the small island nation of Seychelles where my wife and I are pioneering Youth for Christ. We train leaders and help grow churches, but the heart of what we do is the evangelism and discipleship of unchurched and unreached youth. I cannot think of anything else that I would rather be doing.
I love to learn, but there are many places in the world where there is a shortage of solid Biblical teaching. Seychelles is one of those places. My wife and I were married young and entered the mission field fairly early in life. Though both of us have learned a lot between our church experience and training in YFC, neither of us have any kind of degree or ordination to show for it. The fact that we can change this through CLI is a tremendous blessing and the fact that the cost is amazingly low really helps a couple like us who work on a missionary budget. CLI not only presents the opportunity to learn, but also provides me with some credibility as a servant of the Lord. CLI is also becoming an asset to our ministry here in Seychelles as solid Biblical training is another goal of Youth for Christ Seychelles. We are recommending CLI to many leaders in Seychelles. Our own pastor has recently applied and is anxious to start the CLI courses.
Though I don’t work in any one church, I identify myself most with the term Pastor. As I stated, my ministry is heavily focused on evangelism and discipleship and I am deeply involved in this ministry day to day. I have had the privilege of seeing many young people come to the Lord, but I don’t feel that I am a gifted evangelist, I am just doing what every Christian is expected to do. I feel that my strongest gifts come in the form of teaching and shepherding, therefore I feel that I am gifted in the mold of a pastor. You could say that I am a pastor of unchurched youth.
Seychelles faces many spiritual challenges. The foremost problem that I see is a lack of trained pastors and Biblical teachers. Many churches stray out of bounds doctrinally and people are very confused as to what the Bible teaches about salvation, spiritual gifts and the work of the Holy Spirit. Fortunately, we have the support of many churches in the United States and our local church here in Seychelles is becoming a shining city on a hill when it comes to solid Biblical teaching. We have many people from this church serving as volunteers and board members in Youth for Christ Seychelles. Youth for Christ Seychelles has been given access to secondary school campuses through our Campus Life program. The simplest way I can describe Campus Life is that it is a crazy youth group type atmosphere with loud music and the Bible being presented in a way that unchurched youth can appreciated and understand it.
My Call
My name is Phyllis Solomon and I am 39 years old. I live in southeast Georgia in the U.S. with my amazing husband of 14 1/2 years and our three children. I am blessed to live in a country where I can openly share my devotion to Christ with whomever I want. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean they reciprocate the offering of love. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that Christians are judgmental hypocrites. My call is to depict before my peers, family, and loved ones the true life of a believer—someone whose not perfect, but has experienced the grace and favor of Jesus Christ through no merit of my own.
My Story
My first encounter with Christ occurred when I was 6 or 7 years old. I was a very shy child and grew up in a very poor neighborhood with my mom and 5 siblings. Around age 5, my father and mother divorced. Nothing special, since 50% of marriages fail. But my father was a pastor of several churches. He also had 3 different families. My siblings and I represented the third. After divorcing, my mom moved us into my grandmother’s home. It had 2 bedrooms and a kitchen. That was it! No bathroom, indoor plumbing, heat, or air conditioner! We were super poor.
We lived in those conditions for a long time. When I turned 7, I went to the library where I picked up a book about cats. On the front cover sat a perfect little red-tabby kitten. I fell in love on the spot. I ran all the way home to tell my mom that I wanted that kitten. And as you may have guessed, she told me she didn’t have to money to purchase one.
My heart sank. And then something amazing happened. My mom turned back to me and said, “I can’t buy that kitten for you, but if you pray and ask the lord, he will bless you with it.” And I did just that. For two weeks I marched around my little home crying and praying for a red-tabby kitten. Two weeks from that day, one showed up on my back step. He looked exactly like the picture I saw in the book I read.
In that moment, God sewed a seed in my heart that He was real, His Word was real, and He was mindful of me. I gave my life to him at age 13 and have been on this Christian journey since.
My Dream
My dream is to become a minister of the Gospel and to share the love of the Gospel with people through my home church and our outreach ministries. Especially young people. Currently, I lead praise and worship during service, work in the nursery, am a women’s ministry leader, work on the technology team, youth ministry team, young adult ministry team, and am the vice president of our non-profit out reach program. A full plate! But, I love it. I am definitely a youth leader.
Preparation
Recently, I felt the Lord’s call to become a minister. Just as 2 Tim, 2:15 tells us, I want to study to show myself approved. My first thought was to go to seminary. But with 3 pre-teens and debt from my previous degree, seminary was not an option. Thanks to CLI, I have another option.
Ministry
I live in a college town and my church is getting ready to start a college ministry. This is very important to me since I’ve been praying for a chance to encourage young adults in the same way I was encouraged at that age. After working in an HIV clinic and reaching HIV victims, I learned that everyone has a story. Some have been hurt, betrayed, and taken advantage of at a very young age. Everyone needs love and Christ is the ultimate love. Please pray fro me and my co-laborers as we set out to do the work of the Lord.
Rory Tonkin – New Zealand
My name is Rory Tonkin and I come from New Zealand. It is an amazing country with boundless freedom, however sometimes freedom may come at a price. Ignorance and arrogance sometimes seems rife and any talk of Christianity is often laughed at or ridiculed. However their are many Christians and the church community is still strong nonetheless, it just feels more hidden than other countries. Their are plenty of opportunities for ministry in New Zealand with great numbers of spiritually broken people and many youth growing up into gangs.
Growing up in a small town called Motueka I went to a Catholic School where I learnt about Jesus and grew in my beliefs, but always struggled with certain hypocrisy and teachers who I felt were very unjust. I knew about religion back then but never knew about nor had a relationship with Christ. For years I held onto my beliefs but never delved deeper until I met my now Wife who is a Christian and encouraged me to come to church with her. I refused at first but eventually relented. At first I didn’t feel comfortable there and felt many people would be judging me due to the way I looked with many tattoos. I did grow to love her church and continue to go there to this day. The time I fully gave myself to the lord was when I was invited to an Easter camp. The whole experience was amazing and the speakers blew me away leading me to rethink everything I’d ever believed. One of the main speakers there was also surprisingly a man who had been a great father figure to me growing up and had taught me many great things.
My ministry dream is to begin to work with Prisoners, either in juvenile detention centres or full adult prisons. I also want to work with troubled youth on the path to becoming gang members, I feel like I most identify with being a Pastor of a Church but would never forget my main focus which is to work with the forgotten members of society.
The key experience in my life which prompted me to pursue ministry would be spending time in Africa (Namibia and South Africa) with YWAM. Just feeling a newfound purpose for my life and not following my old ways just living trying to accumulate material things and constantly searching for pleasures for myself. Learning there is so much more to life than this. The understanding that what is often portrayed to the World as the “good life” everyone strives for and chases often will lead to heart break, despair and depression, You may accomplish so much but without God in your life, you may never know peace.
The unique challenges in my area are really just the feelings towards Christianity and the negative stigma often driven by the media. It can be hard as a Christian trying to break through barriers where people have been taught for a long time not to believe and feel that if they do start to they will be ridiculed by there closest peers.
My local church has been very supportive in my ministry calling, encouraging and praying for my wife and I while we were involved in mission work in Africa. Due to the distance of it to where me and my wife live we don’t have take part in a great deal of the extra curricular activities that are happening but are making a great effort lately to be involved where we can.
A scholarship at CLI is extremely important to my ministry dream as it gives me a chance to complete Ministry training in New Zealand, learn more than I could imagine and allow me to follow my calling of one day becoming a Pastor. If anyone could pray for me and my current ministry dream of working with Prisoners just for more opportunities and for open hearts. Also prayers for open hearts for my family, friends and all others I come across during the rest of my life.