SPEAKER_00 0:00

Have been serving and just really I'm loving so many of you that have been able blessed to be able to know and just really you're all helping me grow in my faith day every day. We try to live in the word and talk with God daily. I feel myself growing closer to God and gaining a deeper understanding that my salvation is only through Jesus. We were blessed with a beautiful, smart, sassy, sometimes pain in the butt-okay, all the time pain in the butt. Little girl Madison. She's three years old and she's just the love of our lives. Um, in June of this year, we found out we were pregnant again. We've been trying for uh number two for some time. I also found out that I had tumors on my thyroid. It was very scary to go through a cancer scare uh being pregnant, and really the only thing that got through got me through it was my faith. Thankfully, my results were benign. But a few months later, I had a miscarriage at 12 weeks. That was one of the hardest things I've had to go through, but through it all, I know that God has a plan for me. He has a plan for us. I know that. I know that we will be blessed with another child. I have uh from some friends that are non-believers, and um just telling them my story because we, especially one of my friends, we have been both trying to get pregnant again for a while now, and she just said, Yvonne, I don't know how you're so composed and you're not you know a mess on the floor, and how are you talking to me right now? And I said, Believe me, I've had my moments, but honestly, it's because of Jesus. He has been my rock through it all, and that's why, because I know, I know that I'll be blessed with another child. I stay focused on the positives of my life now, and I'm blessed that I found Jesus. I that I raised my hand that day at church and that I said yes to Jesus and accepted him as my savior.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

Sorry, gracious with me. Um my name is Reem. Uh, we've been coming to point for a year and a half now, and um, this is my first time to speak in front of anybody, so if you hear something off, just nod. Um my story starts in Amon Jordan, the youngest of five kids. I had a great childhood filled with family, friends, and lots of food. Uh, the majority of the Middle East is Muslim. Um, the Christian population is very small, and most of it is either Orthodox or Catholic, so that made us a minority. We grew up Orthodox, and going to church was something we did two or three times a year for major occasions. The main holidays, like Christmas and Easter, were events to showcase what we were wearing, to catch up on gossip, and to make sure people saw that we came to church. For me, this was more like doing chores and less like having a personal relationship with God. The Bible seemed to be a book with rules that told you when to pray, when to fast, and less like the loving guide it was supposed to be. We had family in the United States, and the plan was always to eventually move here for better opportunities and for a college education. Um, but that plan was altered on a November day when I was 12 years old. My father had been missing for two days, and no one knew his whereabouts. He was a hard-working family man, and his disappearance was very odd. After searching in hospitals and in jails, the police found him in his car on a country road about 45 minutes away from us. He had a gunshot wound to the head, a black eye, and a gun in his hand. We had no idea why this happened or how this happened. Despite the clear evidence of other parties being involved at the murder scene, we had no idea who could have been a part of this, and it remains a mystery till this day. As the patriarch of our family, his death shook us to the core. For months we were visited daily by friends and family as part of the mourning customs, and our life was in a fog. Needless to say, we had to regroup and figure out what to do next, and the decision was to move to Austin. After my father died, I felt lost and confused. I grew angry at God for taking him away so early and for us moving away from home. I couldn't understand how God could be so cruel and how my story could take such a bad turn. It was unfair, and I thought, why did this happen to me? I didn't understand why this happened to me. The following years would be filled with many lies, friendships and relationships, in an effort to fill the void I now felt. By the time I was 19, I left my mom's house to move in with my then boyfriend. Shortly after we were married and had a child. I thought I could fill the ever-growing void in my life through my marriage and with my husband. I realized now that I had a God-sized hole in my heart that no man could fill. During this time, two of my sisters gave their lives to Christ. They both shared the gospel with me several times and often spoke to me about my personal relationship with Jesus. I was uncomfortable talking to them about it and was hesitant to take any further steps. Looking back, though, I realized God was using them to start a work in me. At the same time, my marriage was falling apart. Caught between wanting to be a good wife and feeling desperately left alone by a workaholic spouse, I felt like there was no other way out. After a lot of turmoil and heartache, I decided to leave my husband and get a divorce. I moved out to an apartment with my one-year-old son and struggled to make ends meet. It was a hard season in my life, during which I would cry out to God multiple times. Sometimes I could feel his presence with me, and I knew he was talking to me. I knew I would wanted to know more about him. I just didn't know how. His hand never stopped reaching out to me. Through many fearful nights and financial struggles, he carried me. Then he sent me this crazy. Then he sent me this crazy, handsome Cuban man named Ruben. We got along great and our relationship was serious almost immediately. Ruben was passionate about God and talked about the Christian walk often. One night, thank you. Sorry, y'all. One night, um, when he was sharing the gospel with me, he asked me if I wanted to give my life up to Christ. With tears streaming down my face, I said yes. Right away, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. I knew this was a beginning of a new life for me, a life in Christ. Reuben and I were married only three short months after meeting. God worked in our hearts and our relationship one day at a time, preparing us, leading us, and showing us his never-ending love. Today he has blessed us with two more amazing kids and a start to life and ministry. I'm proud to say that I'm a Texan, a Jordanian, and most importantly, a born-again Christian, living life for Christ to the glory of God. My fear of life's uncertainties does not haunt me anymore, and I know that God is with me always, and his plans for my life are better than I've ever planned for myself. I used to say that the death of my father was a wound that would never heal. But after I got saved, God has healed that wound, and it is now a scar, but it is healed.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Before I start, uh I left my journal with my notes at the house, and so uh Jackson texted me pictures of the notes, and so they're really tiny, uh, so we'll do our best. The other thing is when the planners of this event told us how long we were given, these faithful women stuck with that time frame so well, and so uh they even gave me a little extra uh by being so efficient. So um, if if I haven't had the privilege to meet you, my name is Becca Robinson, and um I'd love to meet you later tonight if I haven't been able to. And some of these ladies took us back to their country of their birth. I'm gonna take us back a little bit um closer than that. I'm gonna take you guys back to a time in my life that started in the fall of this of um 2015. We had just moved to Austin in the summer, and in that fall, we found out that we were expecting our third child. And so I'm gonna actually have to hold this and get it up a little bit closer for my notes. Um, we had been coming to point since that summer, and um so right after Thanksgiving, I ran to Hobby Lobby and got five matching stocking holders, and came home and prepared. The only thing that really legitimizes a pregnancy is a Facebook post. And so I hung those stocking holders on our mantle of our rental house in Austin and uh put up my four stockings that I already had and grabbed a stocking out of some of our old little Christmas things from my days of being a teacher, and hung that fifth one up there and snapped the picture and heralded the news that the Robinson Party of Five would be coming in 2016. And so uh after that, December, uh the flurry of December came and started, and I was pleasantly nauseated with pants getting snugger. In my previous pregnancies with Claire and Scarlet, I had had high blood pressure, and so my OBGYN here in Austin thought it'd be a good idea if I saw a high-risk specialist. They would do a fancy ultrasound and make sure that uh the doctor consulted with me about how we would uh take care of my high blood pressure during this third pregnancy. Uh since I was a veteran at high blood pressure, I told Jackson that he didn't need to rearrange his schedule to go with me to see the specialists. And it would be the only appointment that he had ever missed with any of our pregnancies. Um I didn't know anybody from church quite well enough to do the child dump off for the uh appointment. Uh, and so my mom luckily lived outside of San Antonio, and so she came up to keep my kids for that appointment. Um I went to that appointment and went back for the ultrasound, and the ultrasound tech was sweet and chatty and um just precious, and and we were talking together, and as the ultrasound went on, she got more serious and quiet, and I should have known something was wrong when the ultrasound took 45 minutes. And um, but I thought, well, I've never been to a specialist, maybe they're all 45 minutes long. The doctor came in and said, I don't really think we need to talk about your blood pressure today. She said, he said, sorry, moving the notes along there, I see that you've reviewed refused genetic testing from your file. And I said, Yeah, the results of a genetic test wouldn't make us terminate a pregnancy, and so it didn't really matter to us. And he said, I can understand keeping the pregnancy, but I'm seeing some red flags on this ultrasound. And I would urge you to at least do a blood test so that we could see what's going on. I'm seeing several high markers for Down syndrome. He began to go through the ultrasound and show me the markers that were concerning him, but I didn't really hear anything that he was saying. The nurse came in, and I'm guessing she took my blood because I can't really remember. And they told us that the blood test would be back in about a week to ten days. That was Wednesday. Somehow I managed to get home, and Jackson and I spent the next few days praying for everything to be fine. And luckily, God's hand would have had my mom there, which is who you need in those moments. I had been reading in Samuel about Hannah crying out to God, and for this child, she prayed. And we followed that pattern over the next few days praying. And my prayer was don't let it be Down syndrome. Don't let it be Down syndrome. And that was my prayer over and over and over again. Well, the results came in early, it didn't take the full week for us to get those back. And they asked us to come in on Monday to discuss the results. And we went in, and a different doctor shared with us and explained what the results were. And it wasn't Down syndrome. However, in hearing that, it wasn't an answer to our prayer. It was a genetic condition called Trisomia 18. And the term she used was not compatible with life. Then she started to give us the particulars about trisomy 18. The trisomy 18 baby will typically pass away in utero during the second or third trimester. Occasionally, a trisomy 18 baby will survive, but die minutes or hours after birth. And then the last part of the stats is all trisomy 18 babies die within 24 to 48 hours of being born. She finished by telling us that the blood test also revealed that the baby was a girl. And immediately I knew her name was Hannah. For this child, we had prayed. How sure's the test is what I wanted to know. And the doctor said that a hundred percent of her cells that were tested had 90 scored a 99% that all of them showed trisomy 18. And there it was, my nugget of hope. I knew that I served a God who worked in the 1% of things. We left with the treatment plan of ultrasounds every two weeks, either by our OBGYN or the specialist, to see what was gonna happen. We would either wait till she was born or till she died in uterome. That was the prognosis. We came home desperate, devastated, and somehow prepared ourselves to tell our little girls that their baby sister was really, really sick, and that we really, really had to pray for her, and that the only thing that would make her better was Jesus. We had our life group in about two days. And I'm gonna pull over here for a minute and tell you that if you attend this church and aren't in a life group, you need to be. Those are the people that are going to point you to Jesus when the diagnosis comes, when you lose your job, when somebody dies in your family, they are the hands and feet of Jesus. Find some people. And they confirmed with an ultrasound that she was gone. And so on December 31st, 2015, I delivered Hannah and we said hello and goodbye in the same moment. And then you just have to go home. Suddenly I had become a member of a club, a pregnancy loss that one in four women are in. And the club is terrible. All the members hate being in it and would do anything to trade it to get out. But unfortunately, the membership is lifetime. At home, we started wrestling and grieving and healing and trying to put some sort of answer to, God, why did this happen? It's the hardest question for a Christian to answer. God, why did the most powerful being in the universe allow something like this to happen? It's the hardest thing for non-Christians to try to answer to. And it's one of the things that keeps them at an arm's length from knowing more about him, is because they can't comprehend it. I know him and I can't comprehend it. Sometimes that journey of healing was just standing still, and other times that was dear sweet friends pulling me along. And sometimes that journey moving forward was just falling, um, falling into Jesus and um letting him heal us a little bit every day. One of the passages that someone told me to focus. On and read. When we were going through this, was John 11, which is the death of Lazarus. And I'm just gonna read a little bit of that and tell you some of the characteristics of Jesus that helped us on our road to healing. At first, when the person told me I should read this, I thought, yeah, Lazarus is the story where Jesus brings back somebody from the dead. I think it's sort of insensitive for you to suggest that I would read that right now. But nevertheless, I did. Now, a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary, and her sister Martha. This is the Mary whose brother Lazarus now lay sick. She was the one who poured the perfume on the Lord's feet with her and wiped it with her hair. So the sister sent word, Lord, the one you love is sick. What that says to me is we can cry out to Jesus when things are not right on this broken world. Lord, the one you love is sick. When Jesus heard this, he said, This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory, so that God's Son may be glorified through it. Jesus loved Mary and her sister and Lazarus. What that reminds me is that Jesus loves me. And it's personal. Just how he personally loved that family, he personally loves me and cares when I'm hurting. And he personally loves you and cares when you're hurting. And yet, when he heard this that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was for two more days. What that tells me is Jesus doesn't do what we think he should do. If you heard somebody you loved was sick, we would go there. And yet Jesus didn't move for two days. And on the outside of that, you're like, what? Jesus? Head on over to Bethany. Lazarus is really sick. Even John, writing this in retrospect, uses the word, and yet, like he sort of didn't understand it. The message Bible says, oddly enough, Jesus stayed there for two days. We don't think like Jesus. And so Jesus is not going to do things that make sense to our human brains. He said to the disciples, let us go back to Judea. The disciples said, But Rabbi, a short while ago, the Jews tried to stone you there, and yet you want to go back? Again, the humans that were with him at that time were like, This is a bad idea. We shouldn't go. Jesus doesn't do what humans want him to do. Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours of daylight? A man who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world's light. It's when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light. After he said this, he went on to say, Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going there to wake him up. His disciples replied, Lord, if he sleeps, he'll get better. Jesus had been speaking of his death, but the disciples thought it meant natural sleep. Again, we don't think on the same wavelength as Jesus. So then he told them plainly, Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I'm glad I was not there, so that you may believe, but let's go to him. Which sounds super insensitive. Jesus says, Lazarus is dead, and I'm glad I wasn't there. Can you imagine being the disciples and hearing that in that moment? Moment where you would think, yeah, God's not very compassionate. When you have just passed your small, sweet baby back to the hospital staff, you have moments where you think, yeah, God is not compassionate to me and to my hurt. Skipping on down, he's on his way there. And when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed home. Lord, Martha said to Jesus, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died. I don't know how many times I had those thoughts. God, you could have totally healed her. You could have totally made the ultrasound wrong. Think about how I would have shared that message with everybody. Think about how much glory you could have gotten. I mean, I was really saying these things to myself. Think about how much glory you could have gotten if you would have just healed my baby. And when Martha says that, it reminds me that God wants to hear us ask him those tough questions and wrestle with and work through why we believe what we believe. And again, Jesus on his different wavelength says, I'm the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies. And whoever lives believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? What that says to me is, especially the part, even though he dies, there is death in this broken world. There is physical death and physical trauma that we are going to encounter in this world. But that Jesus offers a life that is not, where that is not eternal. And so later Martha goes and gets her sister, and she says, the teacher's here and he's asking for you. I checked several translations and they all use the word teacher. And I think it's interesting that in a passage of scripture that's about grieving and loss and death, that they call him the teacher. Not calling him the comforter, not calling him the prince of peace in those moments. It's because he wants us to learn something about him and his character, even in our deepest grief. And he has something for us to learn in those moments. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village. He was still at the place where Martha had met him. Again, Jesus, hurry up and get to the scene of the crime. But he's not thinking along the lines that we are. He never does something that our human mind thinks would be appropriate. And when he got to the house, Mary was there, and the Jews who had been comforting her, they noticed how quickly she got up and they followed, supposing that she was going to the tomb to mourn. And when Mary reached him, she said the same thing Martha did. Lord, if you had been here, he wouldn't have died. When Jesus saw her weeping, the Jews who had come along with her were weeping too, and Jesus was deeply moved and troubled and said, Where have you laid him? He said. And Jesus wept. Besides John 3.16, Jesus wept as one of the most famous tiny verses in the Bible, probably because people can memorize it pretty easily. But it's the only time in scripture that he says that he did that. When he turned over the tables in the temple, he wasn't weeping. But when he saw this broken world and people that he loved, grieving and hurting, there's the compassion. And the Jews said, see how he loved him. Some of the Jews said, could not the man who opened the blind man's eyes keep this man from dying? Had those thoughts too. God, you parted the Red Sea. You delivered the children from Egypt. You, you know, made a virgin have a baby. You you couldn't fix some chromosomes. You're the one that knitted her together in my womb. What were you doing? But as I read that passage, I realized that the people that came to comfort Mary, some people were there to comfort her. These are the people from the Jewish church in Jerusalem. Some people knew that Jesus was probably going to head that way. And so these were some of these people were part of the uh the Pharisees or spies for the Pharisees. And that's who was saying those lines. Couldn't this man who could do anything have healed Lazarus? And when I would read that, I didn't want to be a Pharisee. And so I didn't want to say those things of, God, why couldn't you? Jesus said, take away the stone. And Martha, God love her. She's worried about the here and now. Jesus, this stone has been there for four days. It's going, there's going to be a really bad odor. Martha is thinking about the here and the now. And Jesus' mind frame is in the eternal. Jesus took the stone away. They took the stone away, and Jesus looked up and said, Father, I thank you that you've heard me. I know that you always hear me. But I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may know that you sent me. And with this, he said with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. And the dead men came out, and his hands and feet were wrapped in strips of linen and cloth around his face. And Jesus said to them, Take off the grave clothes and let him go. I can't tell you when what day God healed my heart. But I know that I couldn't stand up here and speak to you without an ugly Oprah cry at a point in my life. But I know that gradually, over these months and years, that God healed my heart. The Bible says that he will heal the brokenhearted. And he's faithful to his word that he will heal your broken heart. There's no promise in the Bible that says you won't have trouble, but there is promise for healing and for Jesus to come into your life. When I would read and process this scripture, I would put myself in Mary and Martha's shoes and that trust and dependence that they had to have on Jesus, that he was going to do what he was supposed to do. And then I realized I'm not Mary and Martha in this story. I'm Lazarus. That Jesus called me out of a grave of depression and fear and anxiety and brokenheartedness. That's the grave that I was living in after we lost our little girl. And so in this story, I'm not Mary and Martha who are questioning and asking why. I'm Lazarus. We're all Lazarus. And I don't know what kind of grave you might be in. Whether it's a grave of not knowing Jesus and having a personal relationship with him, whether it's a grave of a diagnosis that you've been given, or fear, or anxiety, depression, the same things that I was struggling with, but he wants to call you out. And he says, take off the grave clothes and come out. I've been hesitant to tell and share this story. Because even in moments in the hospital, I thought, when you're trying to think, yeah, God's doing this for a purpose. You're telling yourself things you don't really believe yet. I thought, well, one day I'll share some story, and out will come a baby we've adopted, or out will come, you know, this story of redemption that I thought would have been a perfect ending to that. And so I didn't want to tell that story. There's a verse in Hebrews that talks about uh Moses and Abraham and Noah, and it says, These people were still living by faith when they died. They didn't receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them at a distance because they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on this earth. Our plan does not fit in with Jesus' plan. Because Jesus' plan is to rescue us from sin. And it's interesting because the story of Lazarus goes on to say that that very day is when they decided to plot to kill Jesus. So all of that thing that we thought is such personal circumstance is really a thread of Jesus rescuing us from sin so that we can have a right relationship with the Father. The ladies that planned this event asked me to share this in, I guess it was maybe the third week of October or something. And so um I said sure, because I felt like the Holy Spirit was saying, it's time for you to share that story. Somebody needs to hear it. So I said yes, and I'm a procrastinator, so I knew I wasn't gonna plan anything until yesterday. And so in my mind when I gave this story, I thought, well, I'll be able to say something that's the that's this fairy tale ending. But I didn't have that when they asked me to share this. So I'd love to tell you a story of that we adopted a baby and rescued them from some horrible situation. And I'd love to stand up here and tell you that I'm sixteen weeks pregnant. But I'm ten. Surprise, Mom. I'm sorry if I haven't been speaking to you in the last couple of weeks because I've been really trying to hide this. And with a forced pregnancy, even though I'm 10 weeks, I've been showing for about 16 weeks. But I want you to know that I'm not just saying this stuff, I'm I'm living this stuff every day, pushing back the fear. What's gonna happen next? To the point where I have an appointment Monday with the same specialist. But I'm Lazarus. I've been called out of a grave, and I know that no matter what happens, I am I get the privilege to be a part of Jesus' story, rescuing people from sin. That's all I have to say.