I see there now that places I have been and people that I have come into contact with have really shaped my life. My parents were new Christians when I was a child, and so sought out help in bringing my siblings and I up in the ways of God. I remember once a year going to a family camp, and there I spent one week with Powerpack! It was during these weeks that God became more than just the main character in the Bible stories I had heard every week at Sunday school. It was during these weeks that I came to understand some very fundamental things about God. That he was real and alive, that he had made me with a purpose and a plan for my life, a plan that was individually suited for me. I also understood that God wanted to be my father and closest friend, that I could talk to him and that He would respond.
Every day in Powerpack I would excitedly listen to a story that was read to us in chapters. The stories were always very adventurous and would have me sat on the edge of my seat, longing to know what would happen next. The last chapter would always bring everything together and speak to me in a way that stirred up a desire for adventure in my own life. Adventures like the ones in the stories, adventure that is gauranteed when we say yes to God and those plans He has for us.
And it was never just the words of those stories, but the Holy Spirit speaking to me through them. There must have been a real freedom at Powerpack for the Holy Spirit to move, because I remember praying in a foreign tongue to God for the first time, and thinking it sounded so strange, yet sweet, like I was pouring out a love song to the father and friend that I had heard about over and over, but had now been able to meet. All of this happened at the age of eight.
I am now twenty two and living in San Francisco, California, working with a missionary organization that reaches out to the homeless and drug addicted population living on the streets. I am far from my home in England, but confident of God’s calling on my life to be here. The thirst for adventure that was sparked as a child through those stories is something I have always had and have only been able to satisfy through seeking out and following God’s call on my life. The power of God that I experienced during those meetings, praying for my friends to be Christians and for healing in people’s lives and seeing God answer me, set in me an great expectation for the things of God. I also remember asking God what giftings He had given to me and how I could use them to see His kingdom come in my life and in the lives of those around me. My passion for God and His ways, my prayers of faith that were answered, my longing for those around me to know the father and friend I had met were all a way of life that I was exposed to at the age of eight and still look back to til this day and say “God I want more of that.”
Frances YWAM San Francisco
