I have really appreciated a lot of the positive feedback I have received since I started writing this blog! My purpose for this blog is to glorify my Lord and savior Jesus Christ and to give Him the glory for ALL I have endured and continue to endure. It is because of Him that I live, breath and continue my journey in life. I can honestly say without a shadow of a doubt that I could not have done it without the Lord. I know that God has given me some very unique gifts such as ministering to children by way of ventriloquism, preaching and using my creativity. He also gave me a unique gift of writing, something I love to do! So how and where did this writing gift begin? Let me take you back to the early 1970's! Yes, the decade where Hippies roamed the earth saying "Peace" and "Far out" and a few years before disco became the thing. Leisure suits were "in" and it was well before anyone knew what a "hoodie" was.
It all began when I was in second grade at Milton Avenue School in Chatham, New Jersey. My teacher, Mrs. Bradley had my class do an exercise in writing. There were a bunch of pictures hanging on the wall of our school hallway. She told us to write a story on one of those pictures. Being a sports fan, I chose a photo of Joe Namath, the New York Jets Quarterback. Just a few years before that, the Jets won the Super Bowl. Unfortunately, they have not been to the Super Bowl since (sorry Jets fans.) My story was about how Joe Namath scored the winning touchdown and led the Jets to victory. Each day, we had to chose a different picture, and each day I wrote a different story. My teacher was very impressed and told my parents at the Parent/Teacher conference that I had an amazing gift of writing and a very creative mind. To this day, my Mom still has many of the stories that I wrote. I recently saw on of them called "The boy who swallowed a cork." Why did I write that? I have no clue whatsoever but you have to admit it is very unique and creative. Little did I realize that my creative gift would be used to glorify God as I grew up.
After moving to Long Island, I continued to work on my writing in elementary school and in Junior High school began thinking about writing a book. My only problem was I didn't know how to start, but I knew in order to get better I needed to just do it and work on my writing. As I entered High school, I could not wait to take a class on creative writing. It was there that I honestly thought God was leading me to become an author. I absolutely loved to write and pictured myself becoming an up and coming author. Due to struggling grades and amazingly being called by God to go into full time ministry as a missionary (so I thought), my desire to be an author was put on the shelf. Little did I know that God had an amazing plan.
I always looked at writing and creativity as exercising a muscle. When you go to the gym and either walk on a treadmill or lift weights, you want your muscles to get stronger. Writing is the same way. In order to get better you need to exercise the creative muscle of writing just by doing it. When I entered Bible college, I joined the school newspaper team for a few years. I remember one article I wrote on the women's basketball team. As I got involved in kids ministry in college and then returned home, I got involved with our churches puppet ministry and that's where my writing really took off. It was very hard to find really well written puppet scripts so I wrote my own scripts. I have lost count how many I have written but I have to admit I really enjoyed it. A few other things I worked on was a curriculum I wrote and self published called Kids in Missions, a 13 week curriculum I wrote teaching kids all about missions by doing missions. I was able to launch a website in the year 2000 and sold numerous copies of the curriculum that had teacher and student manuals. I also wrote articles for Hope for the Future ministries newsletter, the SGT Happenings, my churches newsletter and I was hired by Charisma Life to write object lessons for one of their curriculum programs. my dream to finally become a published author came true when Publish America agreed to publish my children's book "Mouse Mayhem" in 2009.
My goal for the next few years is to have more stories published and I am working on many projects. I never ever want to bury any gift the Good Lord has blessed me with!
UNTIL NEXT TIME...BE BLESSED
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