I Have Been Feeling Lost

Hello! My name is Joanne Fontanilla. I am Junior at Glenview Adventist Academy. I had just turned 17 while on this trip. I recently became Seventh-day Adventist during my freshman year. I am the only Adventist in my entire family. I actually got baptized through preaching this campaign back in the U.S. Of course, it is really hard living in a house when your mother is not Adventist and not a bit supportive of you in your religion. And because of the lack of support from my family, lately I have been feeling kind of lost, like I have absolutely no one turn to, and my faith has not been as strong as when I first got baptized.

You know, I wasn’t that sure if I should go on this trip, just because I have so many responsibilities back at home and I didn’t want to be in some foreign country on my birthday, and this trip was not as much of a priority to me as it would be to most of the people on this trip. But this trip has actually changed my life and how I view everything in life. Yes, I have been on an international trip to Africa before, but this trip is different, it was like God was calling me to this trip. Before this trip, I was a Seventh-day Adventist Christian, but subconsciously I was not willing to give up my all for God. And now, I would do absolutely anything, just so that I know my Father is near me. Before this trip, I literally had no family, a supportive family anyway. And now, I just realized I have had a family all along and that was my church family. No one has ever showed me that they have cared about me as much as the people from church and on this trip. I came on this trip, hoping to help people out and to make myself feel better about myself, but on this trip, my reasons have changed completely. This trip has changed me so much; I am literally not the same. I wasn’t just preaching to the people here in Dominican Republic, I was preaching to myself. I wasn’t just asking them to commit their lives to Jesus, I was asking myself. And God knew that I would even before I came here. And that is why I want to thank the Quiet Hour so much for helping me financially, because without your help I wouldn’t have decided to come at all. Even though I have been going to church and made it seem like I am a Christian, I think that I have been lost for a while, but God found me on this trip. I am pretty sure that He would have been able to reach me some other way, but I’m glad that He did it this way and sooner too, because I would have been so lost for so much longer.

Thank You So Much ShareHim and The Quiet Hour.