Testimony: Leah D., Tulsa, OK

I wanted to take the time to thank you so very much for being obedient to your call, effectively using the gifts and abilities God has given you. I personally have been ministered to over and over and continue to consider you my primary spiritual mentor on a daily basis. Like you do for so many people, you have a way of speaking directly to my heart and situation. My personality really identifies with you.

About six years ago I was introduced to you through a tape someone gave me. After hearing your tape, I began reading your books. I am married to a family doctor here in Tulsa, and we have six children. Your stories about being a mother with a “control issue” really spoke to me. Your teaching has taught me so much about living out the call of God on my life in a practical, realistic way.

In 1999 my family and I moved to Ghana, West Africa, and served as medical missionaries in a small fishing village called Teshie-Nungua. We lived there for two years while my husband served as the director of the local hospital. My time there was the hardest and yet the most wonderful time of my life. God did some amazing things in me and my family. Before leaving for Ghana, a friend handed me a white plastic bag full of your tapes. I just want you to know that in that bag was the Word of God that sustained and changed me over the next two years.

Living in a typical third world village, our electricity and water supply was erratic, and shopping and cooking took hours each day. Every afternoon at 4pm I would go in to my very hot and dusty kitchen and begin cooking our evening meal. Those two hours each day was the time I spent listening to your tapes. Every teaching was my lifeline to God’s strength and grace. While living there, our family of nine—our six children, my husband, me, and a young girl we took to homeschool our children—had malaria twenty-six times. God healed every one of us every time. However, there were days and weeks at a time when some of us were in bed. Again, it was your teaching I listened to each day as I waited for the manifestation of health in my life. God’s Word through you sustained me.

While living there, a team of students from the U.S. came to visit, and one of the team members brought me a gift. It was your daily devotional books! I was amazed they had thought of me, but I was more amazed they brought your book—the one person God had been using over and over in my life. I still use the book, and on the inside cover I have written, “God’s gift to me through a friend.” Every time I pick up that book I think of God’s faithfulness.

In the fall of 2004, the last of my six children went to school full-time, and I found myself in a new season. Every day since then, I take the thirty minutes after the children leave each morning to watch your daily show. Recently your show has played a huge role in the success of my day as my husband was just in Banda Ache, Indonesia, serving the people with medicine after the tsunami. Your show, as well as your daily devotion, have given me strength and encouragement over and over. I even bought your book, Ending Your Day Right, and each night I finish my day with you and the Lord. Again without fail, the Lord speaks a specific word of strength and encouragement to me, taking me through the next twenty-four hours.

When my husband and I went to Kabul, Afghanistan, for another mission trip to help with a local hospital there, I bought your devotional books to take with me to give to our host family as a gift. I am praying that they will speak to them as they did to me during a difficult and lonely journey of obedience.

I am so very thankful for your ministry and wanted you to know what a difference you have made for me. I know your ministry is huge, and your gifts and talents strengthen and comfort millions of people every day. However, for this Tulsa girl who finds herself planted in different places all over the world, I wanted you to know firsthand how your obedience to God’s call has made a difference in my life. I am stronger, better and definitely more equipped to do the call God has given me because of you. Thank you!

I will look forward to the day when we are together in heaven and can share the amazing things God has done in each of us. Be encouraged, plow ahead, keep up the good work, and continue to walk in all the Lord has for you. The Lord is doing a mighty work each and every day through you!