Testimony from our niece Kimberly

June 8th, 2025, I stood in the ocean (purposely waited for an ocean baptism as it’s always been my connection to God since I began surfing back in March of 2014) and made a public declaration to give my life to Christ.

I didn’t grow up in faith. I grew unaware, celebrating beautiful holidays and rituals but I didn’t have a relationship with God, let alone Jesus.

 
I denied anything and anyone that spoke of Jesus being real, the gospel, and organized religion. It was off putting and seemed hypocritical at times.

 
I was a very emotional kid and even through most of my life, allowing emotions to run the show. Then I spent years in Vedanta philosophy trying to logic my way through life, trying to make sense of every single thing before I could move forward. And while it gave me tools to sharpen my critical thinking skills and discernment, it also gave me a level of analysis paralysis and, eventually, an arrogance I didn’t even see coming. I thought I was getting smarter and was actually just getting stuck in 2 areas of my life (stories for another time).

 
My come-to-Jesus moment wasn’t graceful. It was July 2024. It was the kind of crying you see in movies — completely uncontrollable, hands in the air, snotting, sobbing myself to sleep. I told God if He was real, I needed Him to show me. Like yesterday. I’d surrendered before in my life, but not like this. Not with this kind of total release of control, opening myself to something I had never believed in and had barely even understood.

But I kept showing up. I said yes to churches, yes to life groups, yes to people, yes to questions, yes to the parts of the Bible that made me uncomfortable, yes to the parts I didn’t fully understand yet. And the more I said yes, the more I realized: I didn’t need to understand everything anymore. That was the shift. I didn’t need to lean on my own understanding. I just needed to trust. (Proverbs 3:5-7)

I got baptized as a public declaration. I tried to keep my expectations at bay because I didn’t really know what to expect. And honestly? Nothing dramatic happened that day. No lightning bolt. No revelation. But what happened a month later changed everything

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On my birthday — July 6th — I woke up to an email from my church with Proverbs 3:5-6 in it. The same scripture that had been following me around for months. I got to church that morning and a guest pastor from Texas opened by talking about his severe anxiety, his panic disorder, his history with suicidal tendencies, and how his worth had become wrapped up in why God hadn’t healed him. Then he talked about watching a child drown in the ocean as a kid and never going past shin deep in the water again his entire life. There's a beautiful life and evolution to this pastor, and I could honestly listen to him talk for days and regardless of his anxiety, he still helps so many people. What a beautiful story.
That same morning, before I paddled out to surf, a man I didn’t know leaned over in the row behind me and said he felt called to pray for me that week.

A few hours later, I was in the ocean on my birthday, paddling in from a session, when a clean-up set came through. A surfer came charging down the line with no intention of moving regardless of my etiquette and his room to be able to do something different. His fin sliced clean through my left pointer finger. I came up out of the water and looked down at skin completely split open. White. I thought it was bone.

And instead of panic in the water, injured, still needing to get back to shore — I remembered the pastor’s words. I remembered Proverbs 3:5-7. I remembered the man who said he felt called to pray for me that week. Wave after wave, I made it in. A friend from the surf community I don’t even talk to regularly drove me to urgent care. A doctor was impressed with how calm I was despite telling him the remains of what he was probably going to endure with me passing out. I put one hand on my chest, one on my belly, closed my eyes, breathed, and just trusted.

No passing out. No panic. Just peace. Peace doesn’t mean I wasn’t scared or wanted some sort of certainty of what was to come. It’s means I trusted. I was safe. And it was ok that I didn’t know. It was a moment but it didn’t ruin the day. I still made it to my birthday dinner. Only two hours late.

I go to sleep every night saying “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes. Fear the Lord and shun evil.”

There was no single lightning bolt moment the day I got baptized. But there has been, and continues to be, transformation — a slow, steady, unshakable kind — that started the moment I stopped needing to understand everything and started choosing to trust instead. That’s what baptism meant to me. Not a moment. A direction. A deep surrender to faith.

 
An ultimate trust in God. I never understood "my Lord and savior". Now I can't imagine my life without Him.