I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska on May 24^th, 1981. I am a fourth generation Christian. I grew up in church and went to a wonderful Christian school for junior high and high school. My school was independent from any one church -- in fact, there were over 80 churches represented in the student body while I was there. It was largely during high school and my first years of college that I made independent decisions about my faith.

Of my mom's seven brothers and sisters (and their families), two families have served abroad as evangelical missionaries (to Senegal and Guatemala), and now two cousins are in China for the same purpose.

Our main family traditions consist of intermittent family reunions (averaging about every four years), holiday gift exchanges, birthdays, weddings, and annual visitations. My family can be generally seen as two parts: my mom's side and my dad's side and "n'er the twain shall meet" on account of my parents' divorce when I was three years old.

I am the eldest child in my family, so I remember the birth of both my siblings. My brother was born when I was only two. Although I was very young, I remember the occasion quite vividly. He was born at home, as was my sister. However, his was planned whereas hers came about accidentally. I perched myself on the headboard of my mother's bed as she gave birth to my brother. Once my brother had been born, I kept exclaiming over and over -- in my chatterbox way -- "Ba-by! Ba-by!" It is a memory I cherish.

My sister's birth was a quieter and more obscure event. Born in the heart of a violent Midwestern thunderstorm, my sister was not welcomed warmly into this world. The power and phones were out due to the violence of the November storm. My mother was not married, but being the courageous Christian that she is, she gave birth to my sister alone since she could not contact anyone to take her to the hospital. Although it was only about nine o'clock at night, my little brother and I were sound asleep. When my sister entered the world, the umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. She was not breathing, but God answered my mother's frantic prayers and Raine started breathing again. I really thank God for these two events because without my siblings I would not be who I am today. It was because of them that I learned to share, to have patience, and to forgive wrongs done to me. God has used them (and uses them still) to teach me about Himself.

When I was only six years old, my family moved from our Nebraskan townhouse to Tucson, Arizona. It was to be the first of many cross-country journeys we made during my childhood. In Arizona we lived with my aunt, uncle, and cousins for a few months until we got a house of our own when my mom married my sister's father. Those were wondrous times! The days were filled with adventures my cousins and I dreamed up. One of our favorite pastimes was to create some sort of "time machine" out of chairs, pillows, bed sheets, and big box fans that created a sort of balloon-like bubble world. Our creation would take us far back into imaginary lands where we met many terrifying foes, waged war against them, and ultimately conquered them despite the fact that they might have had 20 arms and if they happened looked at you, you would automatically turn to dust. These childhood activities taught me many important life lessons such as self-sacrifice, perseverance, patience, and interpersonal relations. Perhaps I wanted to be the dashing hero, but instead I may have been the one who was kidnapped, hogtied, and burned at the stake or boiled in alien slime. Often we would slave all afternoon over a drama or skit to present to the grown-ups, practicing one scene after another over and over. Amazingly, the adults never refused our intrusion upon them and always applauded our childish playacting. Those years remain in my memory as the most carefree time of my life. It was also during that time that God led me to make a public declaration of faith by water baptism. I was eight years old at the time and though I did not completely understand what it means to be a Christian, I understood that it signified a difference between myself and the rest of the world. Even as He called me to a higher standard of living, God revealed Himself to me as clearly as a small eight-year-old heart can comprehend.

All too soon my youthful carefree days came to an end. My family moved cross-country again. This time we alighted in Florida because my sister's dad (my step-father at the time) was fighting for custody of his other daughter. I utterly despised it! I had not wanted to leave Tucson in the first place, but to make matters even more unbearable, we moved in the middle of August. Anyone who has been to Florida that time of year can testify that it is one of earth's most miserable places. To step outside is to walk into a steamy sauna. The five of us lived in a tiny two-bedroom house -- my brother actually slept on the screened-in back porch. For the first week or so, we were without electricity. I remember sitting on the floor in the sweltering heat -- for we had no furniture yet -- staring up at the ceiling fans that we could not turn on. We could not even have a cold drink because without electricity the refrigerator and freezer were out of order.

Though I was bitter about the move, there were a few good things about Florida: our friends, our church, and the small wood behind our house with vines as thick as my two arms where we could run and play. My strongest memory of our church in Florida is the Thanksgiving service (probably the year 1989). We sang countless songs and thanked our Lord in humble, but glorious ways. I can still hear the voices joining in melodious repetitions of:

Some of my time in Florida had been enjoyable, but I was not sad to move again. This time we were returning to Nebraska where I had been born. We moved in early December and once we arrived, we stayed with some of my cousins -- the family of eight, joined by the five of us, made for quite a houseful! But we enjoyed the fellowship. They lived on a farm, so each day, once my cousins and I had bundled up against the cold, we ran outdoors to trudge through the snow, exploring, discovering, and inventing new ways to entertain ourselves.

My mom wanted my brother and I to have an excellent education, but she did not want to send us into the sinful atmosphere of the public schools. So, I was homeschooled most of my elementary years. When we moved back to Nebraska, I felt really lonely because I had no friends. I started collecting pen pals. At one point, I faithfully wrote letters to 29 international pen pals.

In 1994, when I was thirteen years old, I started the seventh grade at Lincoln Christian School. My family could not afford the full tuition price for my two siblings and me, but God provided a way through the work-study program. We cleaned the school two or three nights a week in exchange for a tuition reduction.

About that time, God began to develop within me a strong interest in foreign missions. I heard tons of stories about kids who were "forced" to go on short-term missions trips only to eventually be called to full-time missions work. These stories made me angry and frustrated because that was what I was simply dying to do, yet I never had the opportunity to go. I used to come home troubled in my heart when I heard stories of Christians who went to the mission field dragging their feet, because there was nothing I wanted more than to serve my God as a missionary. Sometimes I felt bitter toward those missionaries who were "forced" onto the field, but I could not keep myself away from them. I wanted to learn as much as I could about every people group on the globe so I would be prepared, in case I might go there someday.

One day I made a monumental decision of faith. I signed up for a missions trip with Teen Missions. I had no idea how I would raise the money I needed, but I trusted the Lord would provide. He did provide and I met my first goal without too much difficulty. Then my father found out about my intentions. He said that by law I could not leave the country without written permission from both parents since I was still a minor. Due to some of Teen Missions' policies about placing international phone calls while on the teams, he refused to allow me to go. It was a long time before I reconciled myself to that disappointment. I was exceedingly disillusioned and I felt betrayed by God. It was not until I went to Venezuela with my Spanish class on a missions/learning trip the summer after graduating from high school that God fully healed me from that wound. During that time I could see how great and loving our God is and looking back I can see that He wanted me to stay home that summer to learn, make new friendships that have impacted my whole life, and most of all to understand that God is sovereign!

Actually, it is because of this event that I am studying at Cal State Long Beach today. The summer I was supposed to be in the Ukraine on a missions trip, I spent surfing the 'Net. It started one night just as I was falling asleep when I prayed that God would give me some more faithful Christian friends. The next morning I did not even remember my little prayer. But God remembered. That day as I did a random chat search on ICQ, I came across the profile of a young girl in Russia. It said her name was Olya and that she was a Christian. I was intrigued. I sent her a message thinking how cool it would be to talk to a Christian in a country as scary and notorious as Russia. (Nebraska has never quite gotten out of the Cold War mentality). I had a pretty hard time understanding her English, but I praised God for this new Christian friend.

One day when I was talking to Olya on the Internet, she suddenly had to leave. Instead of turning her computer off, she let her brother Fyodor talk to me. I was really happy because his English was excellent and I could easily understand everything he said. Fyodor gave me his ICQ number and we continued our correspondence from that day on. Many times Fyodor talked about his friends and the things he was doing with them. One friend he talked about a lot was Timothy Ha. I was really glad when Fyodor finally introduced me to him (on the Internet).

My Russian friends all attend the same church in Moscow, the University Bible Fellowship. It is a nondenominational student ministry, evangelistic in purpose, which strives to lead people to the faith through one-to-one Bible study and discipleship. I never heard about UBF before, but I learned a lot from Timothy and Fyodor. For example, I learned that the Bible teachers are not called Mr. and Mrs. or Brother and Sister, they are called Shepherd and Shepherdess and Bible students are referred to as "sheep." And I thought it was really funny when I learned that the UBF shepherds go "fishing for sheep." (That is, they invite students to study the Bible one-to-one).

In May of my junior year of high school, I was diagnosed with mononucleosis. It was incredibly frustrating for me to be sick and weak all the time and yet have so many obligations and responsibilities as well as my school studies. Being out of commission for over eleven months was a harsh test of my patience, but God used the situation to teach me to rely on Him for strength. Since I was so ill, I had lots of time to sit quietly and rest. I hate doing nothing for long periods of time, so during the summer after my junior year, I knit a baby blanket and cross-stitched a large pattern for Timothy Ha and his wife -- who were expecting their first child. Both the knitting project and the cross-stitch project presented many uninterrupted hours for me to ponder the things of life. I saw a clear parallel of how God knits together the pattern of our lives just as I was painstakingly creating a pattern of flowers, birds, and bunnies. Sometimes there are times when we have to backtrack and relearn lessons God has taught us, like the many times I had to take out half a dozen rows because of one small imperfection. Always, His pattern is increasingly beautiful.

In June of 1998 when Timothy invited me to attend the UBF International Summer Bible Conference at Michigan State University, I said, "I don't think it's possible. Chicago is too far away." However, God worked in my heart and I decided to at least look for some information about the Bible Conference. I could not find any information on the Chicago UBF web site, so I sent a short e-mail to Chris Kelly. Both Timothy and Fyodor had spoken very highly of him and had both given me his e-mail address. I wanted to attend the Conference, but I had many doubts in my heart.

I prayed about the Conference and said, "Lord, I can't afford to go to Chicago. If You want me to go, You will have to make a way!" Later that same day, I received an unexpected phone call from a friends' dad requesting me to do some computer work for him. When he told me the amount he would pay, I knew that God was at work because it was the exact amount I needed for the Conference registration and an airplane ticket to Chicago. God helped me overcome my doubt and provided for my every need.

I was a little nervous about flying to Chicago alone when I had never before seen the person who was meeting me at the airport. But by the grace of God, I arrived safely and had no problems locating Chris. To my amusement, I became known among the UBF members as "the first cyber sheep." On July 23, 1999, my mom got married to her third husband. I adjusted to having a new man in the house without difficulty because I was so involved with speech team, choir, drama, the discipling program and other projects and activities at my high school.

I graduated from high school on May 14th, 2000, and prepared to go to a private Christian university in California as an Intercultural Studies major. Knowing I would be in California in the fall, I sent an e-mail to Billy Park, who was the webmaster of the L.A. UBF website, to ask about Bible study. I began studying the Bible one-to-one with Connie Park via the Internet and later when I arrived in California, we studied face-to-face.

After my mom and her new husband dropped me off in California in the fall of 2000 following a 35-hour cross-country drive, I found out that my school loan had been denied and I needed $14,000 in order to stay. Furthermore, I didn't even have money to go back home. I tried every possible solution to find the money I needed, but at every turn I was hindered from registering for the fall semester. Finally--on the last day of late registration--God provided me with $14,000 in emergency financial aid so I could stay in California and attend Biola University.

After getting settled at my school, I was able to have my first one-to-one Bible study with Connie at McDonalds. I also started attending various church meetings and worship services. I was really shocked by the run-down appearance of the church building in Long Beach, but I loved the warmth of the people. I quickly became involved in many activities such as Bible symposia, the drama and choir teams. During the preparation for the 2000 Fall Bible Conference, I received the calling to be a Bible teacher for college students.

After a while I began to feel superior to everyone in my church and suspicion arose in my heart. In the spring of 2001, I became confused after listening to some controversial theological statements in one brother's testimony and I left my church. I talked to several friends in other UBF churches and they helped me understand my feelings. Soon it came close to time for the 2001 International Summer Bible Conference at Illinois State University. Chris Kelly invited me to come to Chicago a few days early to help make nametags for the Chicago members and foreign delegates.

Before the conference, Chris and I were accidentally locked out of his house, so we lit citronella candles and used my small, pocket-sized New Testament to study John chapter 3. My heart was stirred by Nicodemus' dialogue with Jesus. I deeply identified with Nicodemus who loved the darkness and was not willing to leave his successful, influential status in life. Many people told me that I was smart, beautiful, and talented. And on the outside my life looked pretty clean, although inside I was hiding dark, ugly sin-secrets. Because of this, it was really hard for me to admit my sin problems and let people see the ugliness of my heart. I'd rather stand behind pride and even false humility than openly admit the truth. Like Nicodemus, I did not want to come into the light. At that time, I spent almost every night fantasizing about my future husband instead of meditating on the Word of God. I mentally tried to convince myself that it was not a sin, but in my heart I knew it was. Through this Bible study with Chris, I repented of my sin problem.

When school started in the fall of 2001, I returned to my church with a more humble attitude. I realized that the cause of my confusion was my own sin problem. I didn't want to repent of my wickedness, so when others talked about God's Word, it made me uncomfortable. After this, I was surprised to find that fellowship with fellow believers was sweeter and more beautiful than ever before!

As I was preparing for the 2001 UBF Fall Bible Conference, God spoke to me through John 21:16. In the NASB it says, "He said to him again a second time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love Me?' He said to Him, 'Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.' He said to him, 'Shepherd My sheep.'" After reading this verse, I made a personal commitment to serve God through the UBF ministry.

Attending a private Christian university was a very blessed experience, but it was extremely difficult financially. I began to feel very burdened by the knowledge that I was piling up all kinds of student loans. I prayed about it and came to the conclusion that I should transfer to a secular school that costs less. I considered many options such as attending Northwestern University in Chicago, going to the University of Nebraska in my hometown, or moving to Massachusetts with my family and attending a school on the East Coast. But through Genesis 26:2-3, I learned that God is calling me to stay in this land. "The LORD appeared to Isaac and said, 'Do not go down to Egypt; live in the land where I tell you to live. Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and your descendants I will give all these lands and will confirm the oath I swore to your father Abraham.'" God's calling for Abraham was to leave his country, his people, and his father's household. But God's calling for Isaac was to stay in the Promised Land.

So now I am involved in intensive Bible study programs (especially during the summer months). I teach the Bible on campus and I participate in all kinds of church activities. I am studying Linguistics and Russian in preparation to be a self-supporting missionary in Russia, teaching English and the Word of God. "Religion" seems a weak term for the influence my faith has on every aspect of my day to day life. Other people may be "religious," but I am a believer in God and the Bible.