Good afternoon, brothers and sisters. My name is Priscilla, and I am 16 years old. When my sister and I were still babies, our parents began taking us to church with them, so we can say that we grew up in a Christian family.

In my opinion, growing up in a Christian family, it may be harder to know yourself if you have only blind faith in God. When I was in the 4th grade, I experienced a lot of bad stuff both in and out of school, and I did doubt if it was right to keep believing in God. Back when I was little, I was really terrible at math, getting all Fs every year, and that is why I always lose my confidence whenever I do math. It was such a blessing to move here, so I promised myself I really have to do my best. In my sophomore year, which was last year, I took math in terms 2 and 4. My grade in term 2 was fine but didn’t really reach my goal, so I worked much harder in term 4, like staying after class for tutorial until 6 p.m. everyday, from Mondays to Thursdays.

I prayed to God every single day, not only for my grade in that class, but also for God be with me constantly. And to my surprise, I actually did improve a lot, and in order to bring my grade from a high B+ to an A, I couldn’t miss more than 6 questions out of 50 on the final. The night before , even though I read the Bible and prayed before I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep at all, and it was probably because I wasn’t fully trusting in God, and that’s why I was super nervous. The next day, I was the last one to turn in my paper, because I wanted to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes. When my teacher told me later that I had missed 7 questions, at that moment I kept praying to God that it was a dream, it couldn’t be like that, and literally crying out inside my heart for God to help me. When I was about to “pass out”, my teacher asked me if I had any missing work, and I said no because I had even turned in all of the worksheets that were for extra credits. Then she asked if I had finished the study guide. I  immediately grabbed it to let her check. She told me that she doesn’t normally do this for her other students, but she felt really bad because I was only 0.28 percent away from an A- , and then she just added the points into my grade book. I’ve been setting this goal since the 4th grade.

I’m not here to show off how brilliant I am, but just I want to say the whole time that I’ve been through, God was with me, he heard my prayers whenever I prayed to him. When I cried out for help, he was the only one that could bring me up. And this is when I started to fully trust in him without any doubts. God is just the best, because he let his beloved son Jesus come to this world and save us by dying on the cross. If he hadn’t done that, we are definitely sinners who would be without a connection with God. Psalm 118:13-14 is my favorite verse, “I was pushed back and about to fall, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation.” I really love God. I also accept and believe him forever as my savior.