A Daily Prayer to a Life Transformed: Danee’s Journey to Faith in God
We present to you another testimony from one of our ZOE Leadership Training students “Hello, my name is Danee. I was born into a ‘Christian’ family, but our faith was only a religious set of rules. There was no church in my village. In my village, people understood Christianity and Buddhism to be basically the same.
My mother once told me that I could choose for myself whether I wanted to follow Buddhism or Christianity. She allowed me to worship spirits or take part in rituals of other religions. Because my family was poor, many times I attended the religious ceremonies simply because I wanted to eat chicken.
The turning point in my life happened when I was in high school. One day, I watched a testimony video of an actress who shared that her father had been sick. She prayed and laid hands on her father, and her father was healed and able to walk again. After watching that testimony, I wanted to have the kind of faith that helps heal my mom. Beyond her healing though, I felt a deep desire to know God.
The only thing I could think of was that if I wanted to know God, I needed to go to church. I started trying to pray to God, but I did not know how to pray. So I simply said, ‘God, I want to go to church. Amen.’ I prayed like this every night for over a year.
When I was about to enter Grade 12, I made a new Christian friend. After knowing me for only a few days, she invited me to live at her house. It was very strange. I had never known her before, but she welcomed me into her family. She told me that she did not know what had led her to invite me to live with them, but she believed it was God’s preparation and part of His plan. Through living with this family, I had the opportunity to go to church for the first time, and I realized that God had answered the prayer I had been praying to Him for so long. When my mother found out that I had moved in with my new friend’s family, she did not object at all. She simply said, ‘They are Christians. They are good people.’
I lived with this new family for one year. They treated me like I was another one of their daughters. I had the opportunity to go to church every Sunday, her parents taught me how to read the Bible, and they gave me money every day.
I felt very happy because I had never received this kind of love before and I came to truly know God.
I first heard about ZOE when I attended a youth camp. At that time, P May, who is a ZOE alumna, taught about human trafficking there. Back then, I did not know that ZOE also had a Bible school.
Before graduating high school, I decided I wanted to study the Bible. However, my parents wanted me to become a doctor so that I could earn a high salary and repay our relatives who had helped support my school fees.
When I told this to my family, my parents and my relatives stopped talking to me. I asked my friends if they knew of any Bible school with low expenses since my family would not support me and one of them recommended ZOE.
A few days before I came to ZOE, my parents finally accepted my decision. They sold a pig in order to pay for my first semester’s tuition.
On my first day at ZOE, I was shocked and amazed because everyone smiled at me. It was very different from the culture I had come from. At first, I thought people would probably only smile at me on the first day, but that was not the case at all.
I was deeply touched by the time of reading the Bible in the mornings because I had never experienced the aspect of personal devotion before. With the help of ZOE, God transformed me into a courageous and loving person. In the past, I never spoke in front of people, shared my opinions, or sung in front of people, but now I have the courage to express myself and I’m a backing vocalist on the worship team. Before, I often judged others, but now God has helped me see people as those whom He created in His own image.
My dream now is to become a pastor. I want to plant a church in my village so that I can share the gospel and teach the Word of God to the people there. I also want to preach the gospel around the world because I love traveling and I want to share the good news with everyone.”