Hello! My name is Todd Brannen I am 21 years old and I was born and raised in Orange County, California. I was raised in the city of Santa Ana, born into church going, Jesus loving family. The first time I think I remember someone asking me what I wanted to be when I grow up I answered,” a pastor!” I would say that growing up I would have called myself a Christian, but I had no idea what that actually meant. Time went on and I started playing baseball and football. So, my future career desire went from a pastor to a professional athlete. Now, elementary school goes by and I’m not much of a rebel. I felt like I was different than a lot of the kids because I didn’t hang out with those kids that were getting in trouble all of the time. Then, during my 5th grade year, I start hanging out with those kids. I never really got into the things they were getting into in the 5th grade. Sadly, my Grandmother passed away the Summer after my 5th grade year and then a few months after that, just after starting school, I was hospitalized for week because I had MRSA, which is a bacteria which has grown resistant to most normal antibiotics. I had missed a very important transition into Jr. High School. Three months later, when I am back in school I had searched for some friends, because I felt I hadn’t really “fit in” yet, since I missed a transition period. I started to hang out with people who I should not have hung out at. Then, in the 7th grade, I found some friends who brought me to Trinity which is now my home church. I have been going there ever since then. But, in 8th grade I grew really close to a friend who wasn’t the best influence on, nor me on him at the time. One day, two weeks before school gets out, I decide that I wanted to give him one of my pocket knives. So, I do so at school(what a fool I was)! He ended up getting caught with it and telling the officer at the school that I gave it to him. We ended up both getting expelled.I had to receive hours of counseling, write an 8 page essay and do thirty hours of community service.
God had led me to do the counseling at church with one of the pastors there and He led me to do the community service there at the church as well. Jeff, the pastor, just spoke truth in my life and my eyes were opened up to God. I learned that this Christian life I thought I was living is actually way more different and way more radical than I thought it was. God started molding my heart to a servants heart in that time doing community service. It was sometime during my Freshman year of High School that I really started being a believer. My sophomore year in HS I went back to a public school now that my expulsion was over. I started connecting with the people in my church and God really had flipped my expulsion into something beautiful! I was no longer walking down the road I was walking when I was expelled.
After graduating HS, after becoming a member in my church, after I had been a true believer for a few years I started going to the college group and Trinity and I also got involved with the Jr. High Ministry at Trinity. the JH Ministry just surrounded me with people who love Jesus and I was able to minister to those JH kids very well, since I had a rough time in JH. I got really close to the college director at Trinity(Derek Rishmawy) and his intern(Stephanie). They just welcomed me in and I soon took on a more of a leader role in the group. I would meet up with them before college group and we would just pray. Derek was also a walking library, he loves books. He really showed me how awesome books are and to this day I still ask him for book recommendations. So, I got into the habit of reading and being a leader among my friends and kids at Church. The friends I met at college group would also play a big role in my life.
One day, one of my good friends asked me if I wanted to go to this conference about the persecuted church, ran by the organization VOM(Voice of the Martyrs) . I said yes immediately, not really expecting what I was going to. There I learned of the reality of persecution and I was able to experience what it was like being a part of the Body of Christ by praying for and sharing about our brothers and sisters who are risking their lives for the sake of the Gospel. This event shaped my heart towards missions, but I didn’t know what God wanted me to do quite yet. But, fast forward about a year or so, I was invited by the missions director at Trinity to go to a missions conference in St. Louis known as Urbana. There I got plugged into this organization that ministers to, mainly, the Muslim population. They have ministers through out the world and so I got involved with them in Anaheim and started working with the Muslim community there. I do believe that God is calling me to ministry to Muslim background people, I received this call at Urbana. At Urbana I committed do doing a few things and was of them is to do a short-term missions trip(up to a year long) and another was a long-term missions trip(3 years or more). And God has brought me now to this wonderful trip where I will be living out the Great Commission of preaching the Gospel to all nations, tribes and tongues.
