Hello World …
… Race that is!
The Life and Times of Jessica:
One day a little over twenty-three years ago I was born, September 9th, 1987 to be exact in the
big city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A lovely little town with everything every other place is
big city of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A lovely little town with everything every other place is
known for, you know: chain restaurants, schools, stores, the big mall, the works! When I was three
(or four) I moved into the house that I lived in my whole life. It was a nice house with lots of attractions
like the ostriches in the backyard that backed up to ours, I loved to swing and watch them fight the goats. Isn’t that what everyone does? Oh wait, back to my story. I went to three elementary schools,
two middle schools, and one high school growing up – why is this important? It’s not, but it happened,
I never moved so that is why that fact is so important and intriguing.
Growing up I was the oldest of four. I mean, I am still the oldest of four so I am not sure why people say,
“Growing up I was …” it all seems odd to me, but I did it too, so we are in this together! Back to my story,
some story teller I am, more like the tangent teller, really. ANYWAYS … Oldest of four: I have a stepsister who is 21, a stepbrother who is 20, and a half brother who is 16. I guess from that information you can deduce that my parents were divorced when I was young – my step siblings have been my sibling practically my whole life. If you can’t tell – I’m the one on the left up there in that picture in our Sunday best. Work those homemade dresses. Oh childhood outfits, but that is another story. Haha. When I was growing up I went to church on and off, and attended various Jesus kids clubs and vacation bible schools. I remember stuff from back then kind of vaguely, I don’t know how some people remember some childhood stories in such vivid detail. Anyways, I remember being the “good kid” for the most part growing up. In church I would bow my head to pray, raise my hand in service when everyone else did, and I even sang along with the hymns. When I was eight years old, I knew that I was supposed to get saved, that’s what was expected of me, and though I was bright for my age, I don’t think I really knew what it meant to ask Jesus into my heart. I had head knowledge and a desire to do what others expected of me, so one night in the car I got “saved,” or what I thought that meant at that time. I used to go to church summer camp several years growing up as well, and I remember those being times where I would sit around the bonfire praying about all this stuff I had done the year before, telling God I would do better and being done with it until the next year. I didn’t understand what it meant to have a relationship with Jesus until one summer night when I was fifteen.
The church I attended through High School was Peace Haven Baptist Church in Yadkinville, NC (off of Boogerswamp Rd. – yeah buddy!). For at least two summers (that I attended), my church hosted a Youth Alive conference which would bring in 700 to 800 teens from all over the state and the country. We would have music and speakers and activities. It was basically a 4 or 5 night rally of sorts. The final night I was there back in 2003, I remember the theme was something along the lines of “Get Real.” Each night after the speakers would do their thing they would offer an invitation to accept Jesus, and anytime this happened I would take that as my cue to zone out, I had been there and done that. But that night I listened just long enough to hear the speaker say, “Are you really a Christian or are you just playing a Christian?” I don’t know about anyone else, but that night he was talking to me, and I knew it, I felt convicted to pray but I was scared to go up to the front, so I sat in my pew. When I got home that night, by myself in my room I broke down and asked Jesus to come into my life for real. It wasn’t a head knowledge, it wasn’t because I was expected to … I wanted Him in my life. I needed him and that night, I became a Christian. However, I was naive to the fact that Christian did not mean my life would be peaches and ice cream from then on, and it wasn’t. If anything, my life came crashing down a few months later when my grandfather passed away three days before my sixteenth birthday. My junior year of high school was rough, not that it had been super easy before then, but I remember that being an extremely trying time.
My senior year of High School went by rather uneventfully and I was accepted to Appalachian State University where I attended from Summer 2005 until December of 2005. Then I dropped out of college and … no just kidding! A couple months before that I received a notification that I had received one of the additional scholarships that I had applied for prior to graduating high school, but I would need to transfer to UNC-Asheville because the program at Appalachian was already above their limit. So after not much convincing, I filled out my application to transfer and became a Teaching Fellow at UNC-Asheville. While at Appalachian I had become actively involved in a campus ministry called the Baptist Student Union, so when I transferred the first thing I did was get plugged in with that group. I attended their Bible Studies my first semester where I met a girl who started taking me to church at Northpoint Baptist Church in Weaverville, North Carolina – which is the church I immediately fell in love with, attended, and became involved in, and is now my home church. Anyways, the Baptist Student Union is where I truly grew in my relationship with Christ and has shaped me into the person I am today. My first experience with missions (beyond postcards on a map in the foyer of previous churches) was as a Spring Break Trip to Gulfport, Mississippi helping with Hurricane Katrina relief. I was instantly in love with Missions. Since then I have been on various other mission trips in the United States and have helped with various volunteer projects in the area. For three summers I served as a missionary through the North Carolina Baptist Campus Ministries: one summer I lived and worked at a childrens home in Kinston, North Carolina and the past two summers I have worked with an organization called Low Country Ministries in the amazing Beaufort, South Carolina. In December of 2009, I graduated from UNC-Asheville with a degree in Literature and 9-12 Licensure, so basically, I should be teaching High School English right about now. However, the Lord has more amazing plans right now (thank goodness, teaching is not my cup of tea), and I am currently the intern at the Baptist Student Union at UNC-Asheville and I absolutely love hanging out with college kids! Also, last November I was at a statewide women’s conference and I felt the Lord calling me to a life of full time ministry, and I am so excited to see where that takes me in the future.
