I wanted to share my testimony for a moment so that you may fully grasp the gratitude I feel right now about being FULLY FUNDED!
I was born in the heart of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa. I don’t remember anything from the first years of my life but I do know that my father passed away at the age of three. Around this time, my sister was born( same mom, different dad). Life got hard after my sister’s birth( NOT BECAUSE OF HER but because of the events that followed). My stepfather was an extremely abusive man. He and I did not have a healthy relationship. For instance, I have one memory of him putting me in a bag and inviting the neighbor boys to come to kick me. Events like this were frequent and instilled in me a VERY skewed view of what a father figure was supposed to look like. When I was around 6, he killed himself. Quickly after, my mother moved me and my sister to a little town( don’t know the name). In this town is where everything began to decline rapidly. We lived in a nuclear neighborhood where everything was out in the open. On our left side was a man and woman who had a little toddler daughter and on the right was a woman who would become my employer. I worked for this woman for a while. My job consisted of getting various goods from vendors and cleaning whatever she needed. I have a very vivid memory of a time when she asked me to grab sugar from a person that lived across town. Mind you, I was extremely malnourished for the entirety of the first 9 years of my life and I had never tasted sugar. Anyways, I was on my way back when I thought, ” maybe if I take a scoop of sugar, she won’t notice.” I opened the bag and took a scoop of brown sugar and when I said that that was the sweetest thing I have ever tasted, my gosh! I was IN LOVE. I ravishingly ate until a wave of terror came over because I realized that the bag’s weight was changing. I plotted that IF she asked about the weight, I would lie. Panicked, I dusted the cubes off as best I could and ran back. Once I got there, I quickly gave her the bag and turned to leave. She stopped me and asked me to turn around. Petrified, I slowly turned and that’s when she noticed the ONE brown cube on the corner of my lip that I missed and she LOST it. She violently slapped me until I understood that if I stole from her again, I would be fired. I, of course, apologized profusely for I COULD NOT lose this job. Ever since my mother was diagnosed with lung disease, I became the family’s only source of income. As a 7-year-old, I had to take care of her, my baby sister, and provide for us. I began to fall short and the further I fell, the worse my mother’s disease got. I had multiple jobs at this time which meant NO time to be with kids. I would watch the other kids run around laughing. My heart longed to be one of them. My yearning became even worse when I would watch my sister playing with the other kids. Part of me wanted her to work alongside me but the other part wanted to protect her from this life as much as I humanly could. I became her only protection when our mother passed away. The death of my mother is one of the traumatic memories I have. I have been assaulted multiple times but physically watching my mother die before me was haunting. After she passed, we moved to my aunt’s house. My aunt had a partner who mirrored my mother’s previous partner. He was angry, abusive, and manipulative. He made being at home not safe. He painted the notion that a husband does not love his wife but uses force to get his way. It was prevalent that we were unsafe so my aunt sent us to her friend’s house and that was TERRIBLE. We moved again but this time into our first orphanage. It was ok, I don’t have a lot of recollection of it. For some reason, we moved into another one after a while. This one has sweet memories for me. There, I made my first friend. She was beautiful with super curly hair, we got along so well. We laughed and played all the time but unfortunately, I was transferred into yet another orphanage. I was so sad to leave her, to this day I still long to see her again. I hope to someday reunite! Fortunately, In this new orphanage, I met some new friends. I was surrounded by kids with hard stories, I felt like I had finally found a home. Now I NEVER thought that I was being moved constantly so that a family could adopt us until the last few months of my being there.This orphanage was my first sense of security so why would I want to leave? Little did I know that God had SO MUCH more for us in store. He was moving in the hearts of a couple in Austin, Texas. After a while, we were adopted and flown into the United States. Life was hard when we came to the states. It was a lot to adjust to ( as expected) but God moved mountains during this time. I learned a lot and finally found a place where I am loved, accepted, and secure. We never had to move anymore! I am now 19 years old and about to go on a journey where I am back into a similar situation I once was in. I am going to be around little kids who are begging on the streets. I am going to be around families sleeping on the streets. I am going to be around kids who have no place to go. At first, I was SO scared to go because I didn’t want to be exposed to my past because I thought if I went going, it would be a move backward in my healing process. When I came to the Lord with my fears, He reminded me that this trip WAS NOT ABOUT ME! I was so focused on me and what I had gone through that I lost the fact that these people have THEIR OWN stories too! I may see parts of their life that resonate with me but they are unique! Also, I am looking at them from a different perspective. I now have the eyes of a princess who was once an orphan. Yes, I was adopted into the most amazing family but I am also REBORN into the Lord’s family! The Bible tells me that I have an inheritance and a seat at the table. The Lord can use me to reveal that a life of abundance is available to them! The Lord has molded my testimony to be a WEAPON in my mission trip. I mean come on, I get to teach THEM English? A once a little girl who did not know a single word now becomes the teacher? The LORD is too good! I am also very excited to learn things from them. There are parts of my past that Jesus is still working on and I hope to find healing and peace as I serve these beautiful people. I didn’t love telling my testimony when I was younger because it highlighted that I was so different from the kids around me. Everyone else had nice stories with a loving mom AND dad and here I was with a messed-up past full of assault, heartbreak, death, and abandonment. In order to be loved and accepted, I started denying the first 9 years of my life. But I now am able to PUBLICALLY put my story on the internet where ANYONE can see it! I could NOT do any of this without the strength of the Lord and y’all! I can not genuinely express my gratitude, I can not believe that the Lord led you reader to JOIN me on this journey. That’s right, YOU GET TO JOIN ME! I may be the one physically there but your support and prayers are the ones that got me there. Even if you did not support me financially, your friendship and thoughts are beyond valuable, so for that, thank you. I can’t wait to share stories and moments with y’all. I will update you weekly on what God is doing! I LOVE Y’ALL with every ounce of my heart! LET’S GO TEAM KINGDOM! I didn’t love telling my testimony when I was younger because it highlighted that I was so different from the kids around me. Everyone else had nice stories with a loving mom AND dad and here I was with a messed-up past full of assault, heartbreak, death, and abandonment. In order to be loved and accepted, I started denying the first 9 years of my life. The older I got, the harder it got. I became angry and short-fused until several therapists made me realize that I was just responding to the trauma I had suppressed. It soon became too much for me to handle and that’s when the Lord WRECKED me. Amid the wreckage, I found the mercy and grace of the Lord. I thought that once I accepted Him into my heart that my past would not affect me but I learned that Jesus reopened the past so that I could walk through and process but this time, He was there to hold my hand. I have come to LOVE telling my story, the Lord has used it as a WEAPON against the enemy.
SHALOM,
REMY
