I was 11, and my grandparents raised me in church since l was too little to remember. My granddad is a bass player and would go to all these big, fancy churches and play for them. My grandma and I would always tag along, even if that meant going to two or three churches in one day. Some of these churches had Children’s Church that I would go to, but when I was there, I just felt like we were repeating the same things over and over again. Eventually my granddad stopped playing for these churches for a little while, but that was going to change soon.
One day, my granddad met a man that looked a lot like one of his relatives, they ended up being uncle, and nephew! He invited us to his church, Change of Life Pentecostal Tabernacle. We went that next Sunday since we hadn’t been going to any church recently, and it was way different from any of the churches I’ve ever gone to. The pastor in the pulpit was a true man of God. He gave us the truth, and only the truth, going from one scripture to another to back up the first one. He only preached out of the 1611 King James Version Bible. He covered a lot of ground during our first service of being there.
After the service, everyone welcomed us with open arms. I also found out a lot of things there. In our first service during worship, a sister ran around the building, praising the Lord, as it turned out, she had broken her hip for the second time, the same hip, about a month prior. Here she was, jumping and shouting and praising God like it never happened! After the first service ended, I made a friend. Apparently, she had been praying for a kid to come to the church for years, and then came me. I’m still proudly friends with her, another sister, and a brother of the church, I don’t ever plan to stop either, (Ecclesiastes 4:12 KJV)
Even though I’ve been here for about a year, I’ve watched people come and go, and people on the prayer list come to the church or get healed. People get new jobs, or anything that they need at the time. It feels like I’ve been here and known the people here forever.
As a child, I’ve had this world try to pull me in all different types of directions. I’ve been homeschooled all my life, but once, I thought I wanted to go to public school. I didn’t know anything about it, I just knew that most kids went there and made friends there, so I wanted to go. Looking at what’s happening in this world now, I’m thankful for being homeschooled, especially with brothers and sisters of the church that I can trust without a second thought.
Now I’m 12, I keep church cards in my backpack in case I come across a person that seems like they need some real word of God in them. My granddad plays for the church now.
My family and I got baptized here, and we are rooted in this church. Even though we are not living in a mansion, or walking around in designer clothing, we could not wish for anything more.