- Hi everyone, my name is Angel and I'm a recent graduate from UC Irvine. Growing up until this day, neither my parents nor any of my family members are Christian. I first learned about God through a church summer camp my mom enrolled me in during the summer before second grade.

Because she heard a lot of good things about the camp from family friends, she disregarded that the camp was a Christian camp. I ended up attending this camp for three years, but it was nothing more to me than just a place where I got to sing and dance to songs, learn cool stories from the Bible, go on field trips and hang out with my friends.

There's no personal relationship with God or any desire to learn more about him because I grew up with my parents' mentality that there's no need for God to depend on if we're able to live a comfortable life based on hard work. So although it was a blessing to be able to grow up comfortably, that comfort had also blinded and hindered me from seeing myself as a sinner in need of a savior.

Before I received Christ, I was self-sufficient and heavily relied on my own efforts and works to make myself and others see that I was a good person. Externally, I used things like good grades, good relationships with my peers, volunteering, and all sorts of reasons to justify why I was a good person.

Even though these things are good things, it didn't mean that I was a good person just because I did them. Internally, it was just a facade masking the ulterior motives in my heart to puff up my ego and pride. My pride from thinking that I was self-sufficient led me to also think that, as long as I carefully find out my own life and followed it, then I'd be able to be successful and have a life free from anxieties and uncertainties.

God opened my eyes and revealed to me my own sinfulness when I was invited to be a camp counselor in 2014 at the same church camp I attended when I was younger. This summer was when I clearly understood the gospel for the first time as not just good news for people who were sinners because they did bad things, but as good news for everyone because everyone is a sinner that's in need of God.

As Romans 3:23 states, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." The gospel message was no longer just another Bible story I heard when I was younger, but it was something that was personal to me and showed me that there was truly nothing I could do on my own accord to attain salvation.

That was the states in Ephesians 2:9, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that is not your own doing; it is the gift of God." And also in 1 Peter 1:3, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

It is only in the surrender of my will to the Lord and my trust placed in His sovereignty that I can find peace and comfort, not in my own efforts and works. As I continue to learn more about the fullness of Christ, I recognize how often I fall short from His perfection, but continually diving deeper into the Word has allowed me to cultivate a greater understanding of what it looks like to live a life according to the Spirit that magnifies the gospel and pleases the Lord.

I was very blessed to have been able to be a member at Breen throughout my four years of college and to have been surrounded by believers who continually strive to live gospel and scripture-centered lives. As grown in my love for the Lord, I must also continue to obey and hold the authority of His Word highly in all areas of my life.

I was initially sprinkled in a Lutheran church when I became a believer back in high school, but after searching through scripture with a desire to obey Christ in all areas of my life, I want to practice the act of baptism through immersion, the manner that God had intended to instruct the believers through His Word and for the sake of full righteousness." Thank you.