I Will Call on Him as Long as I Live

Hey, my name is Angi Holder. I am 14 years old, and I am a freshman at Glenview Adventist Academy. I am adopted so I don’t know my real parents, but my mother and my father are my heros. My mother grew up in Brooklyn, NY, and my daddy grew up in different parts of TX. My mother grew up as just Christian, and my daddy grew up as Methodist. Both of my parents were married once more before, so that's where my sister and brothers come from. Well my parents have been married for 23 years, and that’s a good thing. I come from a family where my brothers and sister are not Christian. And my other family is all of another denomination. One of my brothers has recently gotten out of rehab for taking drugs. So my family has been going through some pretty tough times lately.

So you may ask, "How did I become a Seventh-day Adventist?" Well, I was Lutheran before I became SDA, and I went to a Lutheran school, but things got too, how could I say this, “bully-ized.” So, I switched over to public school. At the transition of school, my mother wanted to find out more about the SDA. In my family (not including my brothers and sister), I was the last one to accept Adventism. In public school, I started to get involved with a lot of stuff. For example, girls in my school wanted me to start up a “girl gang,” but I was smart enough to refuse that. I was just starting to get into the drug scene, and I started to smoke. Next I got into the partying scene. I started getting interested in religion when one of my “friends” asked me to hide him while he was running away from the cops. I decided right there that I wanted to stop what I was doing, but soon after I started to wander away again. About two months after that incident, my best friend from public school got pregnant at age 13. I decided again that I wanted to stop the lifestyle I was living and change it. And this time, I kept my promise.

I entered the SDA church thinking I had to be perfect and do everything perfectly. So I got involved with my small church. I became the main song leader and one of the helpers. But I was feeling suffocated. So I started going to Glendale church. There they accepted me and my family. I just wish my mother would go to church more often. Well, in November of 2007, I went to Ecuador to build a church/meeting place. I didn’t really like building. So my pastor invited to go to the Philippines to preach, but that trip got cancelled. So when Karen Glassford called up my pastor, he recommended me for the Dominican Republic trip. When he told me that he recommended me, he told me that they already had my plane ticket and so I was ready to go. I was kind of dreading the trip because I knew it would be long and I knew I haven’t really studied for my sermons. I am new in the SDA church; I recently got baptized about a month ago. So to be preaching as a new Adventist was a scary thing to do, but the Lord blessed me, and I have been doing well. My sermons have been going well. I believe that the Lord has stopped the devil in his tracks so I can preach His word to His people.

I want to thank the Quiet Hour for their contribution so I can experience this amazing trip. And I want to thank my pastor for recommending me. And I want to thank my parents for letting me go. I also want to thank Karen Glassford for calling up my pastor so I could experience this. And I want to thank all the people on this trip for making it a fun and cool place to be. I also want to thank my church for accepting such a young person to preach to them. I feel that God has really used me in other peoples lives. And I thank God daily for blessing me with this trip. Thank you everyone!!

Psalms 116:1,2—“I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; He heard my cry for mercy. Because He turned His ear to me. I will call on Him as long as I live.”