I was born in a family of believers and had a very happy childhood. As long as I can remember, I have attended Pentecostal meetings. I also learnt to trust the power of prayer from early on, and also to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. I made the decision to follow Jesus Christ as my personal Saviour at the age of eight and I can still remember the meeting where this took place and how good it felt.

When growing up, I started to experience a conflict of kind of wearing two faces. I was aware that as a Christian, I should give testimony to the people around me, but I was very much afraid what they would say. Now looking back, this was a very ridiculous concern, since my friends visited my home where hymns were played the next room and also in other aspects, my family's life style did probably not leave much room for doubt. Anyway, I was all the time anxious. I knew that God would not be happy if I would not express my faith, but I was also all the time afraid that my secret would be found out. This made me very stressed and insecure.

When I was 15 years old, my family moved and I had to change school. I felt that God saw in His grace how miserable and weak I felt and gave me another change. The people around me were replaced by new ones and gradually, I was able to, naturally or otherwise, but anyway, let them know who I followed. Nobody stoned me to death or burnt me at the stake. It felt very good to be accepted as who I was, and not as people might thought I was.  This is, by the way, a common experience. We often fear in advance what people would say if they found out we consider ourselves as Christians, but in general, people accept and respect that. From that on, I have tried to live my life in a way that I do not pretend to be anything that I am not, and I feel this is a lot easier. 

I think that my story might help people perhaps in a couple of ways. First of all, I was very weak to testify and very much afraid of what other people would say. Unfortunately, this is often the case. But God was big and good enough to help me out and I trust He will do that to others as well, one way or the other. Also, I think that being openly who you are is a lot healthier than to all the time concentrate on keeping the mask up and fearing it will fall of one day eventually anyway. If we would pretend less, we would personally be happier and healthier, and that would also encourage other people to do the same. This would make all of us feel better and help to connect with each other.