Who I Am

          “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Thousands of years later, He created me. I was born on the 5^th of April in 1991 to Susan and Eric Perla. I grew up lookin’ good on the outside, doin’ the whole church thing. I was in Sunday school every week, accepted Jesus Christ into my heart at age 11, had “Bible studies” with the neighbor kids and baptized my dog. I had plenty of friends, had my future planned out and life was good. Then one day God decided it was time to start telling me His plans for my life and ruined everything.

It all started about six years ago when the leader of my school’s Christian club gave me a book on John Wesley, a missionary and founder of the United Methodist Church. I read about his life and all of the things he did and thought it would be pretty cool to be a missionary. But the thoughts were short lived and before long I was back to my dreams of becoming a rancher and owning tons of cattle on thousands of acres. I went on a couple mission trips in junior high but it wasn’t until the summer of 2006 that God really smacked me with His plans. I was on a mission trip to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina with Adventures in Missions. We did prayer walks, door to door evangelism and worked at soup kitchens and clothing donation centers. I fell in love with the mission field. One night after worship one of my leaders, Gina, prayed over me and after she was done leaned over and said, “When you become a missionary, I’m going to work for you.” She said it with such great confidence. She was positive that I was going to be a missionary. God spoke through her that night and I will never forget those words.

            After that trip to Mississippi I was pumped. I was positive that I was going to be a missionary and nothing was going to change my mind, well, at least for a few months. Soon, I got distracted and strayed away from God and the dream of being a rancher came in to rule my life once again. One night, as I was lying in bed thinking about what my ranch house would look like, a random thought popped into my head, “I wonder what God wants me to do with my future.” Immediately I thought of the verse 1Timothy 4:13. I had never read the verse before and, honestly, didn’t even know if the verse existed. I decided to open up the Bible and look it up to satisfy my curiosity. The verse read, “Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to preaching and to teaching.” I couldn’t breath. As fast as I could I read the whole paragraph and was completely amazed at the words I would soon be living my life by. “Command and teach these things. Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity. Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. Do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic message when the body of elders laid their hands on you. Be diligent in these matters; give yourself wholly to them, so that everyone may see your progress. Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.”

            A few months later I was boarding a plane to Iquitos, Peru in the Amazon Jungle for a month long mission trip with AIM. The following year I went on another trip to the Philippines. While there I felt God calling me to go on the FYM trip to Latin America So, I signed up and now I’m am on my way to a nine month journey in Nicaragua. This is my life in a nutshell and may “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen”