I recently got the chance to share my testimony for a local church in my area. I have known the family that asked since I was in kindergarten. Little did I know when I was five what a blessing this family would be in my life. So, if you guys are reading this, I love you and I am so grateful for you :)

My name is Kaylin Stanley. I am 17 years old. I was born and raised in the upstate of South Carolina. I do want to start off by saying that whenever I have been writing these blogs or whatever, I have found that being honest, transparent, and vulnerable has brought the most growth, so that is my goal for you all today.  When I was asked to tell my testimony, I didn’t really know how to respond. I knew I had a couple of choices, such as fear. I could’ve said no because the thought of doing this is pretty scary. My other option was to respond yes to what I knew was an opportunity God had aligned for me. I decided I’m going to tell you about a couple different things that are important to me and how i've gotten to where i am now. 

First I'm going to talk about my family. From an outside perspective, my family could seem pretty ordinary. My dad works for our family pharmaceutical business with my uncles, cousins, and brother. When I was two years old, my mom got diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma. As a result of the chemo and radiation, her nerves were permanently damaged leaving her 75% blind and 75% deaf. She can still see and hear and you would never know unless you spent an extended period of time with her because she’s pretty amazing. This does obviously limit her to some degree such as not being able to drive or be able to read the way most of us do. So from about two years old to now, that’s all I’ve ever known. As for siblings, I have one brother. His name is Jacob. He is currently 21 years old and in college. We have your typical brother/sister relationship of bickering here and there but always having each other's backs when needed. My dad has 4 siblings which gave me quite a bit of cousins. We are all pretty close and get along well. Basically my built in friends. I also want to talk about my grandpa. My grandpa was a huge influence in my life. Him and my grandma were missionaries in Haiti. My grandpa grew up in Haiti because his parents were also missionaries. In 2017 and then again in 2018 I got to go on mission trips to Haiti and it was my favorite experience of my whole life. From hearing stories as a little kid sitting on the side of grandpa's bed to getting to see it first hand, I have always had a love for Haiti and missions. 

I’m going to be honest, for a long time growing up I thought that in order to have a testimony you had to come from an awful past and God had to have this crazy redemption story in your life. For me, that wasn't the case. I was born and raised in church. I gave my heart to Christ when I was 7. Now I realize that God gets the glory for each testimony no matter the person's past. I have a deep love for church. The community, the worship, the growth, each part constantly leaves me wanting to go back. The first church I ever went to was the type where every older lady treats you like their grandkid and you sing from the hymn book. It was very traditional. When I was in 7th grade, a church reached out to my current church interested in making it another campus. The vote ended 51 to 49% no. I was absolutely devastated. My parents decided that we were going to switch churches and begin going to ALIVE Wesleyan in Central. The only good thing I could see was the fact that I got to switch with like 6 of my cousins. We began going to youth and on Sundays. At ALIVE we have what are called guest teams. You can serve coffee, help park cars or help guests. This is a team of volunteers that do offering, hold doors, pass out bulletins, and help out first time guests. When I was 14, my dad joined one of their teams and really liked it, so I joined with him. This is where I found one of my biggest passions. I love service. By the time I was a freshman, I had moved up to leading my own team on a Sunday morning. I will say it is pretty weird to delegate all of your responsibilities to grown adults, but we make it work. I have served on this team for about 4 years. I have also branched to serving on our coffee team as well as our Wednesday night worship team. 

Now I’m going to kind of switch gears and talk about what the past year of my life has looked like. As I am sure it has been interesting to say the least for most of you, mine came with many trials. For those of you who don’t know, I decided to graduate early for reasons I’ll talk about soon. What this looks like at Easley is that you skip junior year. So at the end of the school year in 2019, I was a sophomore. Come that August, I was a senior. I don’t know if this is just me or human nature in general, but I somewhat resent change. It’s pretty hard for me. I like comfort and knowing exactly what’s coming next. What I didn’t know was that God had loads of change lined up for me this past school year. In October I got accepted into a Gap year program I had been praying for for 3 years. It’s called the World Race Gap year program where you spend 9 months traveling to 4 different countries spreading the gospel. What this looked like was over the next 11ish months I had to raise $15,800. As for me, I thought I was supposed to wait for God to give me a “yes”. “Yes Kaylin, this is what I want you to do”, but I didn’t get that. Silence. My mom told me this isn’t one of those things you sit around and wait for. This is one of those situations where you open your own door and God will affirm you in His timing. This sounds like a lot of fundraising on top of a full schedule at school, as well as working at least four days a week after school. Let’s just say I stayed pretty busy. During this time, my grandpa’s health was declining to the point where he was almost constantly in and out of the hospital. My mom’s health was also declining, but in all honesty we didn’t know what was wrong. My dad spent most of his free time in and out of hospitals and doctors appointments. On November 16th my dad called me and said to drive over to my grandparents. This was the most surreal thing I have ever experienced. All my aunts, uncles, and cousins were gathered around my grandpa's bed as he took his last breath. The thing about this is I had never lost anyone. In my whole life, outside of grandpa’s, I’ve been to one funeral and it wasn’t for someone I really knew. Something I’ve learned is that I am an emotional suppressor. I push everything down and don’t allow myself to skip a beat. Outside of a couple late assignments and a day off work, nothing changed for me. Later on in the story, this will be my downfall. While it broke my heart and I missed him more and more each day, I had confidence that he was no longer suffering and was running around with Jesus. That coming Thursday was his funeral. This was also the date my mom was having surgery to get her gallbladder removed. We assumed that getting her gallbladder out was going to fix all of her problems. In December, there was a Wesleyan Conference that happens every four years (I’ve mentioned this in a past blog).  I went and this is when God finally said “Yes Kaylin; this is exactly where I want you.” While this was amazing, I was so distracted. I had about $300 in the fundraising bar. I found myself stuck in a sadness I didn’t know how to escape. I stopped doing anything for myself. I just went through the motions, not really allowing myself to feel anything. My friends began getting into new relationships and my family was occupied and I was just doing what I knew how to do which was keep going. Come February, my mom got diagnosed with congestive heart failure. Which was absolutely terrifying. Come march, we got put into quarantine. Here's another transparent moment; I was angry with God. From my perspective, my mom was the most faithful woman I had ever met, yet has suffered more than anyone I know. In about May they realized that mom was either going to need a pacemaker or a heart transplant. It felt like God was throwing curve balls endlessly to the point I felt as though I could only dodge them rather than catch them. My youth pastor stopped me and said, I can’t even imagine what this is like for you, but I want you to know that whatever you’re feeling is okay and it is always okay to ask for help. Somehow this was eye opening. I realized I never processed anything. I took one day where I ranted to God. I told him how disappointed I was in what was happening. Told him how unfair I thought he was being. Just let out all of my anger. I then began to ask God to restore my joy in salvation. I learned to put my joy in him rather than school, work, or friends. 

Now, mom is in the second half of recovery from getting a pacemaker put in. She’s doing extremely well.  I have found a group of friends that love me and push me closer and closer to God each day. I am more prepared than ever to move overseas and bring people to Jesus. In May God allowed me to raise over $5,000. I have raised a total of $10,200!! I leave in a little under a month and will be doing a pancake breakfast in a couple saturdays.I have never felt this much joy in such a time of uncertainty.   

All in all, I realized that God wants you to rant to him and come to him regardless of how distant you’ve been. I climbed out of my rut. Out of all of this I realize God is preparing me to move in with 100 strangers in a foreign country. At my church this Sunday we talked about how God only gives us one tiny puzzle piece at a time. We are just a tiny link in his bigger picture. So if you take anything from anything I’ve just rambled on about, I want it to be that It is okay to go through valleys, but remember how faithful he has been. My favorite bible verse says ‘God works everything together for the good of those who love him” If you truly believe this and live out this truth, no trial seems unworth it or unbearable. Keep running. You are strong. There is nothing too big for God.

SONGS:

What a friend we have in Jesus

This is a move- brandon lake

Fighting for me- riley clemmons

Lean back- capital city music

I LOVE YOU :)))

Kaylin <3