Hi, everyone, my name is Marlene. I’m from college group and currently studying nursing in Assunta College. I thank the church for giving me an opportunity to be on stage and share my testimony. Today I would like to share how God brought me back to Him and how He has blessed me in my life.

Before I share about that, allow me to let you have a glimpse of my background. Born in a Christian family, I had been staying in my auntie’s house at Melaka for quite some time since childhood. My cousin and I were regulars in the Sunday school; therefore, Christianity and Jesus are not strange for me. However, when I finished primary school, I shifted to KL back to my family. You all might assume that I would stay with my family. But no, I did not and the hostel became my home instead throughout my secondary school life in KL even right till now. During that period, my parents and I didn’t attend church because they were busy with their business and I wasn’t sure which church to go to. My life went haywire, made worse by the strained relationship with my parents. We didn’t understand each other. Whenever they gave me advice, I won’t listen to them. They put me under a strict regime during school time and limited my activities such as shopping with friends and staying overnight at their house. But the rebellious me disregarded all that and I even cheated on them. All these caused much hurt to my Mom. My studies were a mess too and I failed to get any good results. Despite all these trials, praise the Lord that He still loves me and so does my Mom. My Mom finally understood later on that perhaps school is not a suitable platform for me to further my studies and forcing me to continue with it might affect my future. Therefore I left school after SPM and continued STPM in TARC. While I was there, I started joining Christian Fellowship. My parents also brought me back to church.

Back in church, my life started to have a turn-around. My relationship with my parents grew better and my Mom and I even started opening our hearts to share our feelings. Because I came from a Chinese school, I’m not very good in English. I didn’t even know how to construct proper sentences and communicate with others in English. This caused a major struggle in my studies during STPM. But praise the Lord, I managed to overcome this hurdle at the end with God’s strength. Without Him, I wouldn’t be able to be here right now to share my testimony in English. Even though I didn’t manage to further my studies in university after STPM, studying in TARC managed to improve my English, and this is also what my Mom hoped to see by sending me to that college.

Studying nursing in Assunta is also I believe, God’s plan for me. Why I said so is because of what happened one day during my STPM exam when my Mom came to my hostel to look for me. She passed me the student intake form for a nursing course and asked me whether I’m interested. She knows that I like biology very much and also that I like to help people. Actually I wanted to study bio-tech after STPM, but she advised that this is not a good time to study bio-tech in M’sia. She suggested to me nursing instead. She told me nursing is not only about biology but also helping people at the same time. Most importantly I will be able to use this profession to share the Gospel. I took some time to think and finally decided to take up this challenge, filled up the form and went for the interview. Before the interview, I pray to God and said to Him, “If nursing is really Your plan for me, please let me go through this interview successfully. Whatever Your plans are, I will obey.” After my STPM exam, I received an offer letter from Assunta. So I obeyed His plan and joined nursing January last year even though my STPM results were not out yet.

God blessed me tremendously once I started the course in Assunta. Throughout my 3 years there and 5-year contract with Assunta, I continuously prayed to God and told Him my desire to find a local church to serve Him because I have already wasted much of my time in unfruitfulness. I don’t want to waste anymore time. My prayers were answered when my seniors Patricia and Xin brought me to church and their care group. So I started to join their activities there and praise the Lord, my Mom and I were even water-baptized last year. My Dad also gradually followed my Mom to church every Sunday. I believe that God will touch my Dad’s heart one day and he will accept God as His Lord and Saviour. I also became an official member of the church effective from last year 3rd quarter. Early this year, I told God that I want to serve in a ministry and become a shepherd. God again, answered my prayers. I currently serve in the Registration ministry and I’m doing follow-ups on the visitors and I believe, God willing, my prayer to become a shepherd will be answered by end of this year. God really opened a lot of doors for me to serve Him through the Registration ministry, my care group, and church events.

On the other hand, God not only blessed me in ministry, but also in my studies. From not knowing how to speak English to be able to communicate in that with people now; from not being able to read English newspapers to be able to read and understand English books now. There’s still room for improvement though in terms of vocabulary. But I’m still continuing to learn. Not only that, there’s major improvement in my exam results too and my scores are much better regardless of theory or practical; another remarkable evidence of God’s blessings on my life.

I’m very thankful to God for bringing me back to Him no matter how worse I was before him. So, I want to use my testimony to encourage all brothers and sisters, no matter what happens in your life, God still loves you, He won’t leave you alone because we are all His children. His promise never changes and He has the best plan for you.
I would like to end my testimony with this verse from the Bible: Jeremiah 29:11-14. Thank you