Dwane’s Story:

My dad was a preacher in the Apostolic Faith Church in Chehalis and Puyallup, Washington, and after I left home he ministered in Woodlake, California. Growing up, I absolutely understood what salvation was and why I needed it. One year at the camp meeting in Portland, Oregon, when I was about ten years old, I was sitting up front during one of the meetings. It seemed like the preacher was pointing his finger right at me and saying, “You’re going to Hell.” I hadn’t committed a lot of sins, but I knew I had done things that would keep me out of Heaven. As soon as the service ended, I dropped to my knees and prayed, “Lord, save me,” and He did.

Because of my upbringing in church, I knew I needed to be sanctified to experience real holiness. So the next Sunday, I prayed through to sanctification.

When I got home from camp meeting, there was a noticeable change in my life even at that young age. I’d had a tendency to fight before—I enjoyed getting in fights when I had the opportunity—and that desire was gone after I was saved. I’d also had a fear of missing the Rapture, particularly during thunderstorms, but I didn’t need to worry about that anymore.

Before the next camp meeting came, I went to revival services at our church in Chehalis, Washington. People had told me that the baptism of the Holy Ghost was even better than salvation and sanctification, and I was seeking that experience. After one of the meetings, the Lord came down and blessed around the altars, and He filled me with the Holy Ghost. I didn’t speak in tongues for very long, but long enough to know it was God speaking through me.

Another eventful camp meeting happened in my early teen years. I was sharing a cabin with one of my brothers who had recently been injured in the military. He had a brain scar causing epilepsy, with recurring seizures. I was told that he could never be left alone during one of those episodes. One night in the cabin, he started having a seizure. I needed to go get help, but I couldn’t leave him alone, so I just prayed, “Lord, I need You to do something.” Immediately, the seizure stopped. These attacks always lasted a long time, so I knew God had done a miracle. Though I had seen many people healed before, it was always when my parents or ministers had prayed. That time, I was the only one praying, and God had answered. To this day, I still look back on that incident to remind myself that God hears even when you pray all by yourself.

I enjoyed my years growing up in church, but my theology was not very deep. My motivation for being a Christian was mainly to avoid Hell. At some point during my teenage years, I started to wonder if I was missing out on something by being a Christian. I made up my mind to join the Navy once I was old enough, so I could see what else was going on in the world.

At age seventeen, I did join the Navy. My boot camp was in San Diego, California. No one there knew who I was, so it felt like it was my chance to try out a different lifestyle than the way I was raised. However, I soon realized that the other guys there didn’t have any peace. The pressures of boot camp were breaking down some of them. I thought, I better stay saved during boot camp.

After boot camp I went to a military school. My roommates there found out that I was a Christian and they made it their goal to get me drunk before our training ended. That frightened me and I thought, I better stay saved during school. I started asking the Lord to help me stay saved, and He did. He showed me that He could keep me if I wanted to be kept.

After school I was assigned to a station in Norfolk, Virginia. I thought I was finally in a place where I could find out what a worldly lifestyle was like. One night, I drove to a bar, but as I sat in the parking lot the Spirit of God spoke clearly to my heart: “You can try this, but remember that preaching on Hell—the reason you got saved? That’s where you’ll be.”

I went back to my barracks and saw one of my roommates so drunk that he could hardly talk. All I could think was, I don’t want that. The next time I had to stand guard on a weekend, I was there on Friday night to see the aftermath of that lifestyle. In the bathroom, dozens of stalls were filled with guys who were sick or passed out on the floor. Again I thought, I do not want to live my life like that. 

I was beginning to see that my plan to find out what the world had to offer was not a good one. I was curious what else was out there, but I definitely wanted to make Heaven, and I knew that if I turned away from God for even a short period of time, there was a chance I would not make it back to Him.

One day, I drove to a state park and sat in my car wrestling with these thoughts. There, the Lord let me know that I needed to make up my mind about serving Him, because He had something for me to do. That was a surprise to me—it had not occurred to me before that God had a plan for my life. Finally, I surrendered everything to God and told Him, “If You can use me, I’ll do whatever You’ve got for me to do.” When I got out of my car, I felt so good! I went for a walk in the woods and it felt like my spirit was running down the trail ahead of me. I was so excited to be fully, one-hundred-percent on God’s side.

From that point on, I really started enjoying the Gospel. I already knew a lot about the Bible, but now I had a personal interest in understanding it and applying it to my life. Not long after that, a lady I worked with came up and told me, “I just want you to know, if I ever become a Christian, it will be because of what I see in you.” Then she walked away. I told God, “Thank You, Lord. I guess maybe You can use me.” That was just one of several times that God let me know He was using me to reach others, and it meant a lot to me.

During that time, I met a girl named Rosa from one of our churches in New York. The Lord led us to get married, and later gave us twin daughters and a son. Rosa was a wonderful wife and mother, and everyone who knew her knows that she was a prayer warrior.

We were blessed to serve God in some of our branch churches on the East Coast and West Coast over the years. Then in March of 2007, with our kids in their mid- to late-teens, the Lord saw fit to take Rosa to Heaven. Our children and I were devastated by that loss, but it was a comfort to know that God was in control, that Rosa had made her goal, and that the Lord would always be with us.

Over a year later, at the camp meeting in Century, Florida, I met Teresa. She had lost her spouse around the same time I had lost mine. We married in 2009, and the Lord has blessed our family.

Without a doubt, the best choice I ever made was to get saved and stay saved. Though I once wondered if there was something better than the Gospel, the Lord in His mercy allowed me to see that the world has nothing to offer. There is nothing better than living your life in God’s will. I thank Him for all the goodness He has shown to me.

Teresa’s Story:

The Bible was a very open Book in the home where I grew up. My mom, Lillie Segres, was a prayer warrior. It wasn’t strange to wake up in the middle of the night and hear her praying. My dad, Nick Segres, Sr., was a pastor and he took the Word of God very seriously. He was kind and liked to laugh, but when it came to the Word, he didn’t waver.

Despite that upbringing, I never had a desire to be a Christian. I didn’t get saved and backslide—I stayed a sinner my entire childhood. I was stubborn and quick to say how I felt. If something in Scripture didn’t make sense to me, I questioned it openly. My dad used to tell me, “Teresa, you have a different way of thinking, but God can use that thinking.” He did not invalidate my questions but pointed me back to the Bible and made sure I knew that it could answer every question in life. The way my parents lived and breathed the Gospel, I knew that if I ever got into trouble, God was the answer.

My upbringing followed me even when I tried to get away from it. In college, I wanted to have fun at clubs and parties, but I could never escape thoughts like, This is not what you were taught, and, If the Lord came now, where would you be?

Once, when I asked my dad to pray about something for me, he told me, “You’ve got to pray for yourself, because I’m not going to always be around to pray for you.” I didn’t take him seriously, but it was true. My dad passed away when I was twenty-three years old. That shook me, but not enough to get saved.

At age twenty-seven, I married a man named Larry. I don’t advise anyone to marry before getting saved, but through the prayers of my mom and grandparents, God blessed me with a loving, loyal husband.

A few weeks after we married, we got into a fight that caused me to see how much I needed God in my life. We had some laundry to do at the laundromat, and I thought we would have dinner together afterward. But once we loaded the clean clothes into the car he said, “I’ll see you later. I’m going to play basketball.” That didn’t sit well with me. I thought, Why should I be folding laundry while he plays basketball? I had a very quick temper. I used some words that should not have been used and started throwing the clothes. He stayed calm and drove us back to the apartment, and then left to play basketball. I was furious!

Convinced that I was right, I called my mom and told her what had happened. She told me, “Teresa, take a seat. Let me tell you what the Word of God says.” My mom went back to the solid foundation that I had been raised on as she reminded me that marriage is “till death do us part.” She said I needed to keep my duties as a wife regardless of what Larry did. She said, “The next time I talk to Larry, those clothes had better be clean and folded, whatever you had planned for dinner better be cooked, and you better have a polite look on your face.” 

After that conversation, I knew that for my marriage to survive, I needed to change. My current attitude was not going to work in a marriage. In my heart, I wanted a marriage like the one my parents had, and I knew salvation was the key.

Right there, I got on my knees and told God, “If You save me, I’ll serve You.” It took me a while to pray through and I had to ask God to give me faith, but He saved me that day and made a big change in my life.

My new relationship with God changed my relationship with my husband and saved our marriage. I had always been quick to fight with unkind words, but God worked on me and helped me learn to express myself with more love and kindness.

Our sons were born in 1998 and 2002. When they were young, one night their dad was very late coming home. More than an hour passed, and I became irritated. I started plotting what I would say when he got home, but then I felt God ask me, “How do you plan on drawing him to the Gospel if you still want to be the old Teresa you used to be?” That struck my heart. I went to our guest room and prayed for a long time, asking God to help me be the person He wanted me to be. That night, the Lord sanctified me. From then on, my emotions did not influence me like they had before. It was as if God changed my DNA. My attitude changed from “I can’t do that as a Christian” to “I don’t want to do that as a Christian.”

A while later, in one of the sermons during Century camp meeting the preacher spoke about how wives are not less than their husbands, but they are also not the head of the household. Because I was saved and my husband was not, I had felt that I was in a better position to lead our home. But God was showing me that I still needed to respect Larry as the leader of our family. He helped me to see my husband in a different light and gave me a new appreciation for him.

That year, on the day after Thanksgiving, I was praying at my mom’s house and told God from the bottom of my heart, “Thank You for the husband You gave me.” It was not a long prayer meeting, but the Holy Spirit came down and filled me, and gave me the witness of speaking in another language.

Larry and I were married for ten years. All that time, he never hindered me from going to church or camp meetings. He even gave money for youth programs. A couple months before our tenth wedding anniversary, Larry was in the hospital for a minor problem, and during that time he asked my brother to pray with him for salvation. About a month later, on Easter Sunday of 2007, he came to the morning service and gave his first testimony in church. Just two weeks after that, he had a massive heart attack and passed away.

The way the events unfolded, God let me know that He is on His Throne. He has a plan in everything He allows and at just the right time, He had led Larry to receive salvation. Yet, losing him was incredibly difficult. Our sons were ages three and seven, and I felt like I got knocked down and didn’t know how to get back up. Many times, all I knew to pray was, “Jesus,” and that prayer carried me along. Through everything, God was faithful to me.

In my mind, I didn’t think I would ever marry again, but Dwane came into my life the following year. He became a friend that I could talk to about the challenges of losing a spouse and becoming a single parent. In an amazing way, God blended our families together, and now we share five kids and eight grandkids.

In all the years that I have been saved, God has never failed me. As a matter of fact, this walk with Him has only gotten sweeter, stronger, and better. God has been so good to me and I know that if I keep my hand in His, He will see me through whatever comes my way.

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