Testimony
Louisa's
 
I grew up in the church, and both of my parents sang in the choir.  My younger brother and I spent many evening rehearsals playing on church pews… We would have these races - we would put all the kneelers down, and then starting from the back, we would go under the pew, over the kneeler, under the pew, over the kneeler, and the first one to reach the front was the winner.  We thought it was a fabulous game. My parents did not share that opinion...  I remember my mom praying with me every night, I knew all of the usual Bible stories, and I had a happy childhood.  But it didn’t stay that way.
 
My dad left when I was 12; we had just moved to Laramie, Wyoming where we had no support, no family, no friends.  Our house went into foreclosure.  My mom reached out to a local church, St. Paul’s Newman Centre (Newman Centres are primarily Catholic outreach to university students, but you don’t have to be a student to go there), and the pastor helped her find legal support and a fellowship group.
 
I was at a difficult age where I was old enough to know what was going on, but still too young to really understand.  My dad was a university professor and he had had an affair with one of his students, only 7 years older than I was, whom he married after the divorce was final.  I wanted to be the support and strength my mom needed, and of course to fix everything…
 
The emotional strain took its toll on me physically.  By grade 10 I had chronic mono and missed school for weeks at a time.  I stopped going to church.  I was at the age of Confirmation, but I chose not to be confirmed.  I couldn’t stand in front of the church and say “I believe” when I didn’t believe.  It would have been a lie.  I spiralled into a deep depression and social avoidance that lasted three years.  I slept for 16-18 hours every day.  I couldn’t leave the house, or answer the door or the phone.  To this day, I still feel panic sometimes when the phone rings.
 
During that time a homebound tutor, appointed by the school, came to my house so that I could graduate from high school.  Her name was Cindy and she was a Christian.  I think she was thrilled (as a public school teacher) to have a student she could actually talk to about matters of faith, which we did a lot.  Finally with medication and counselling, I was able to get back to school to repeat my senior year, and singing in the choir is probably what motivated me the most.
 
At the start of my freshman year in university, my dad was on his third wife by then.  My mom never remarried.  A friend in my college choir, Sue, invited me to go on a student retreat in the mountains led by her church – which just happened to be St. Paul’s Newman Centre.  I told her that retreats were not my thing… but she talked me into it.  It was an amazing weekend.  I could tell these people truly loved each other, and loved and accepted me, and I knew that Jesus was real; Christianity was real.
 
After that weekend, I was at church every single day.  I couldn’t get enough.  My mom thought I had a new boyfriend, and I was like, “Yes, it’s Jesus!”  She didn’t know quite what to make of my sudden reawakening of my faith…  I would get out of class at 5 pm and then walk over for Mass at 5:15; my new friend Nicole and I would go for supper at the Subway or Taco Bell next door, and then go back to the church to study, watch Star Trek and cross-stitch until the church closed at 11 pm.  I immediately got involved in confirmation classes because now I wanted to be confirmed.  I also got involved in music ministry, and was the music director at the church for two years.
 
I began to question my direction in university.  Everyone said “just choose a major, get a job, make money”, but I thought there had to be more to life than that.  I seriously started to consider and pray about becoming a missionary.
 
That answer came when a group of Covenant Players (an international Christian drama ministry) performed at St. Paul’s one weekend in December.  I was singing at all four Masses, so I saw their performance four times.  They asked if anyone was interested in serving the Lord, communicating the Gospel through drama and music, and loved to travel – and I was like, “Sign me up!”  So I left my ‘nets’ behind, and flew to California and joined Covenant Players.
 
I toured for 2 years on music and drama teams in 44 of the United States, and then for 8 years in Europe:  Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, France and England.  I have performed in eight different languages.  It was full-time ministry, living out of a suitcase for 10 years: we were billetted in host homes and moved every 1-3 nights.  I met my husband James in Covenant Players, and he was originally from Sault Ste. Marie, so we decided to move here when we retired from being on the road and start a family.  I continued to serve as the National Director for Covenant Players in Canada.
 
We now have two children, and I have been the Executive Director of the Pregnancy Centre for 5 years.  So, after all this time, I’m still working in full-time ministry. 
When my faith was reawakened that day in the mountains, my mom thought I was just going through a phase.  But, here I am 26 years later… it wasn’t just a phase.  It was a complete change in my worldview and direction of my life.  
 
I still struggle with depression.  I hide it most of the time, with varying degrees of success.  I don’t think you can experience the kind of debilitating depression that I did and not feel the echoes later on.  When you follow Christ, He doesn’t magically make all of your problems disappear.  But He is WITH YOU through it all, and that’s what makes the difference.  He doesn’t leave you, He doesn’t give up on you.
 
It doesn’t matter what you’ve gone through in your life, how messed up you think you are, because Jesus can redeem that, and He can use the challenges and losses you’ve faced to minister to other people.  If you don’t feel like you’ve ever had that personal relationship with Jesus, or you haven’t experienced that reawakening of your faith, you can ask Him right here, right now.  Today might be the day.