I became a Christian when I was seventeen years old. At the church I was attending, God gave an older man a ministry of paying for children to go to camp. This was my very first time at camp. I didn’t know what to expect and to me it sounded fun.
At camp, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour during my one-on-one devotional time. I was on the beach reading Matthew 7:7, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (NKJV).
Little did I know, that this would change my life. At first, I still lived as I had in the past, swearing and living with a warped mindset thinking that dressing provocatively and gathering attention was how to feel loved. I would casually read the Bible, attend church, go to youth group, and a morning prayer breakfast at a different church. I loved hanging out with my Christian friends, they were so welcoming and were willing to pray for me. I even got to live with a Christian family, my last six months of high school, while I put myself through school.
After high school, I moved in with my close aunt in Saskatoon. However, a few months later, I attempted suicide from struggles with the traumatic family matters that overwhelmed me from earlier in my childhood.
Through this season in my life, God orchestrated a mentor for me. In that time of being mentored, I grew so much in my relationship with Jesus that I was ready to publicly commit my relationship through baptism. In March of 2003, I was baptized.
A few years later I started seeing a counsellor, for the sexual abuse I endured while I was 12 to 14 years old. It was not easy; the only way I got through it was with the prayers of others and God giving me the strength and endurance to keep working at it. It was very stressful at times, but God gave me the courage and I wasn’t ashamed of having being abused anymore. I would talk to friends about it and found others who had been abused. God showed me that I wasn’t alone in this.
At age 24, I felt God calling me into missions, so in March of 2008, I flew to Seoul, South Korea, and did three months of training. Through that training, God brought more things up from my past that I needed to work through. After three months, I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Our team worked with an orphanage, a youth centre and helped a pastor build part of a roof on a school.
In mid-August of 2008, I flew to Lebanon, Pennsylvania, for a four-week TESOL course, teaching English as a second language. Afterward, I was home in Canada for two months, before I left again.
Before leaving, God orchestrated that Dan and I would meet two weeks before I flew to Siguatepega Honduras, Central America. At that time, Dan was working at a youth centre. He gave me his business card and said, “When you come back, don’t be a stranger!” This was the one and only time we hung out before I left to be a teacher overseas. Little did I know that this “chance” meeting would grow into something much bigger while I was overseas. One New Year’s Eve, I felt prompted to text Dan who was still mostly a stranger. I texted him, and every few days after, we would text each other. Mostly asking each other if we had any prayer requests, so we could pray for each other.
However, the relationship had grown since that first meeting and by the time I flew home, Dan proposed to me. For the next seven months, we did premarital counselling and during the counselling, we talked about how we both wanted to go back into missions.
God did a work in my life; as a wife, I had to learn to communicate, and I am still learning to communicate. I have learned to continually pray for our marriage, to spend time in the Word regularly, rely on God’s Word and trust Him when we are struggling.
There were things that I had to overcome, such as working with youth and not being scared of them. God knows we have a heart for kids and youth. We’ve tried to have our own children, but there were so many doors that were shut. God has answered two of our prayers. God has answered our prayer to be missionaries and has uniquely given us children in the youth that we work with in ministry.
God is still working in my life and is using the pain I have experienced and the counselling I received to help those who have experienced similar hurts. I am thankful for how God has brought me through these challenges, and for bringing Dan to walk alongside me, as we both continue to grow in Christ and in ministry.
I want to conclude with Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (NKJV).
Dan & Pam Engel joined NCEM in 2018 and are living in Birch Hills, SK, where they have been building their prayer and financial support team while awaiting opportunities to carry on regular outreach to northern Saskatchewan communities.