My name is Eliana and this is my testimony. I was adopted into an amazing Christian family at the age of one from China. They would bring me to church every Sunday and take me to every event that ever existed like VBS and church camp. They even enrolled me into a Christian school, which eventually kicked me out because I was too much to handle. But even after going to all those places, I didn’t care about the Gospel like I should have. I didn’t think of it as anything different than any other story from a book.

It didn’t start to click until 2007 when I was visiting my cousins. At the time, they were having their own VBS. The leaders there took each camper one by one into a room where they sat us down and asked us if we knew about the Gospel and salvation. I said that I did. She explained it to me again just to make sure I understood everything. She said that we are all sinners, but because of God’s grace and mercy and how much He loves us, He sent His son on to earth to die for our sins. Three days later, He rose up from the dead to heaven. If we believe in Him and repent our sins and live to be more and more like Christ, then we can be with Him in heaven. After talking for a while, she asked me if I wanted to accept God as my personal savior. I decided that I did. After I told her, she prayed with me and let me go back outside with the other kids. But all of the feelings I was feeling then soon disappeared.

During the beginning of TIGS, my mom’s fibromyalgia started to become very bad. I, being the super rebellious teenager I was, did not help We fought a lot and I even ran away from home. My grades started to drop and I started to avoid talking to my parents. During that time, I lost interest in everything, including God. Luckily, during that time, TIGS had their winter outing. I don’t really remember what the main theme was, but I do know that it was there when I started to depend of Christ for everything, including my mom’s health. I started to follow the example that God gave us. When I got home, I prayed and read the bible. I talked to God a lot, and it felt like he was talking back to me. I didn’t fight with my mom as much and stopped running away. Many months later my mom got a lot better. It was a sign to me to put all my trust in Him. He is the most powerful and I should give my life to Him.

Not too long ago, my CYF sponsor, Jonathan Ginn, spoke on baptism and said that we have no excuse to not do it. As long as we believe in the Gospel and want to devote our lives to Him, then we should get baptized. For me, baptism means to go public with my faith in Jesus and it symbolizes that once we come out of the water, we are not the person we were entering in. We are no longer defined by our sin, but are brought to new life with Jesus. So here I am, declaring to everyone that I am not ashamed of being a child of God and want to dedicate my life to Him.