Marcel's Testimony...what Amazing Grace!

Marcel, our ten year old son, was baptized yesterday. It was so special to hear his explanation of how he was lost and then found. Marcel is incredibly articulate and described beautifully first how God found him physically through adoption, and then how God found him spiritually. He has such a precious heart and truly loves the Lord. I am so thankful for the gift he is to us. (Okay, enough of the proud-mom bragging). 

I am also very thankful for my grandfather, Arnold, and my father, Dennis. This weekend was their 35^th anniversary of committing their lives to Christ (they both answered the same alter call 35 years ago during a simple sermon at a small church in Rhode Island and dedicated their lives to Christ). Both my grandfather and father are heroes to Marcel (and myself!) and it was so special for Marcel to have two great grandfathers, a grandfather, and his father present. He is surrounded by wonderful men and quickly growing up into one himself.

Here are some excerpts from Marcel’s testimony that he read on Sunday. It was very powerful to witness and I hope it encourages you. Every word here is directly from Marcel's mouth, I just helped him with grammar and asked him a lot of questions to help him brainstorm all of his thoughts. He gave me permission to post this because he said he wants as many people to hear about how wonderful God is as possible:

"My Testimony" by Marcel Vermon Pierre

“My favorite song is “Amazing Grace” and the song says, “I once was lost, but now I am found. I was blind, but now I see.” I like these words because it describes me becoming a Christian.
    First, I was lost.
I was lost in real life, but also spiritually. I was lost in real life because I had a family that couldn’t take care of me. I was born in Nevada and the first 6 years of my life were abusive, but I was taken care of too, especially by my Grammy. But I was also lost spiritually. I knew that there was something that ruled over the world, I wasn’t an atheist, but I didn’t know that it was the God of the Bible that ruled the world. I used to have a lot of anger and even though I was an ok kid, I had an extremely bad temper.
    Then God found me.  First, God found me a family. Basically, I remember one day that I was playing with my camera robot when this couple named Dennae and Vermon came over. When I first saw my dad, Vermon, I thought that he was a giant compared to me and was a little afraid of him getting me. Then, I wish I would have jumped up on my dad, Vermon, and begged him to be my daddy, but instead I hid from him and waited for him to find me. But that’s okay that I didn’t beg my daddy to adopt me, because my mommy and daddy, Dennae and Vermon, had already seen me and they were the ones begging God to let me be adopted.  So God found me a family and let Mya and I stay together as brother and sister and then gave me another brother, Judah.
    Before I was a Christian, I didn’t understand why my life was so torn up and messy, but God took something really terrible and made it into something really wonderful. This is the first way that God began to show me his love by giving me a Christian family.
    Then, after God found me a family and saved me from my bad situation, God found me spiritually….and this makes me think of the part of the song that says, “I was blind, but now I see.”
    This is the main sermon I heard that helped me become a Christian. I was at Grant Park in VBS and Mr. JJ was talking about being blind. He had a candy bar and held it in the field while a blindfolded kid tried to find it.  The point of Mr. JJ’s story was that our sin makes us blind to God but Jesus is the one that can take off our blindfold so we can see God clearly. So I went home and I didn’t know if I wanted to be a Christian or not.
   The next day I went to my room and I was crying because I was thinking all about the sad things in my life. But God softened my heart and I realized I needed Jesus to be the king of my life. Becoming a Christian didn’t fix everything in my life. I still had some problems with anger and missing and worrying about my birth family. But what is so wonderful is that now when I do get angry or sad, I know God is forever my father and that I can stay in God’s family no matter what I say, or think, or do. Also, God has turned a lot of my anger and sadness into joy when I think about what Jesus did for me on the cross. And I am very thankful for my church family that I am going to get to play forever with in heaven…
 Being friends with God is so wonderful because like Psalm 23 says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. Because God is with me.” I am very glad “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now can see.”