Dan & Amy Mark

We knew that God has something planned and decided to open ourselves up to this new opportunity.

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you." Jeremiah 29:11-12 

My wife, Amy, and I have recently shared our faith with everyone at First Baptist Church through our baptism this past January.  We were both raised in the Lutheran church and were baptized as infants, but being baptized again was the perfect way to declare our rediscovered faith in Jesus. 

We were both raised in loving, Christian families, but somewhere along our path to adulthood, we wandered from our faith.  We had known Jesus but had forgotten him.  It was plainly obvious to the both of us that we were missing something in our lives.  A year after our own marriage, we attended the wedding of Amy’s brother, and the event was filled with people who spoke openly about Christ in their lives.  There was something that was starkly different between those people and our own friends.  They all portrayed contentedness, peace, and love that seemed rare.  After a lengthy discussion, we decided that difference must be the presence of Jesus in their lives.  If we did have a moment in which we were saved, that was it.  From that point on, we made a concerted effort to reinvest our lives to God.

We grew a lot during the next year, but we were still not able to leave our comfort zones.  I think I would have been perfectly fine slipping into and out of church without getting involved at all.  Looking back, we needed to be pushed outside that level of comfort.  That push came when I found out that I was accepted to the M.D. program at New York Medical College; Amy left her family, home, and career; and we uprooted to Westchester.  We knew that God had something planned and decided to open ourselves completely to this new opportunity.