Page 4 - Biblical Counseling II

with little conflict or difficulty during my childhood. I will reflect on this time later when we discuss different
topics in this course.

Growing up as the child of a pastor, I was always in church. I often prayed to ask Jesus “into my heart,” as
that was how it was phrased during children’s church. I didn’t completely understand what salvation meant,
so I kept praying! When I was 13, my family went to a Billy Graham crusade in another city. At the end of his
sermon, Billy Graham talked about salvation and asked people to come forward if they wanted to accept
Jesus as their savior. I remember going forward, talking to and praying with a volunteer, and feeling different.
I felt light and free, like my sins were really gone. I can think back to that night all these years later and still
remember that feeling.

After I graduated from high school, I went to a Christian
university in a city about 12 hours away from home. At Calvin
University, I learned more in-depth about being created for a
purpose and being given gifts and abilities to do God’s work
on earth. I grew in my relationship with Jesus during this
time as my university courses were rooted in a Christian
worldview.

I met my husband, Andrew, during my first year at university.
We have now been married for 23 years, and we have two
children. Cailey is 16, and Nate is 13. We have lived in the
states of California and Texas (both warm-weather states!).
We currently live in the state of Illinois, in the Chicago
suburbs. Chicago is a city of 2.8 million people. It is located in
the middle of the United States along Lake Michigan, which
th
is the 5 largest lake in the world. (As a reference, Lake
Malawi is number 9.) Chicago is also the city where Sandwell
and Gift attended Moody Bible Institute. My family enjoyed
seeing them while they were in graduate school!

Chicago Skyline Picture in Black and White is a photograph by Paul Velgos.
The “village” we live in outside of Chicago has
a population of 43,000 people. We live in a
house in a neighborhood where there are
many families with young children. It takes
about 30 minutes by car to get to downtown
Chicago. We can also take a train downtown
that is a 45-minute ride with many stops to
pick up other passengers along the way. We
attend a church that is considered a “mega”
church with 10,000 attendees on a typical
weekend at 3 different services. Our kids are
also in small groups (Bible study groups), with
ten other kids their age, led by an adult
leader.

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