Unlike most of the Chinese with whom we have worked, I had the joy of being raised in a Christian home. Before I can even remember, Dad and Mom Searcy took sister Rebecca and I to a Baptist church near our home. So it was at a very young age I learned about Jesus and His sacrifice for my sins.
One of Mom's nightly routines was bedtime Bible stories and it was after one of these that she said I knelt by my bed at age 3 to say the "sinner's prayer." But I can't remember the experience, so I date my actual acceptance of Jesus as personal Savior to my 5th birthday. Grandpa Searcy had made me a beautiful wooden toy, but I played with it too hard and broke it. Guilt flooded my heart as I realized how utterly sinful I was. I needed Jesus to clean me up inside. So I prayed in my heart right then and there and asked Him to come into my life and forgive me. I remember feeling so light and relieved after that simple prayer.
After that time the Holy Spirit clearly showed His presence in my life. He gave me an early desire to please Him and to avoid "worldliness," which protected me from falling into sins I might later regret. However as a young girl, I struggled with being "over zealous" about doing good, to the point that I judged others or too passionately worried about their sins. I once started a 4-mile walk home from a slumber party one snowy evening, because a girlfriend told a joke with a swear word in it! Another time I ruined a different friend's slumber party by crying hysterically at the sight of her father with cigarette in hand, "Please tell him he must stop or he'll die of cancer!" I was all black-and-white--meant well, but had yet to really "get" grace. Thankfully my approach has been tempered in later years.
Baptized at 12, I remember reading a poem about desiring to walk with Jesus faithfully. Little did I know the cost that decision would exact in high school in terms of popularity, loneliness and even ridicule. Though I was very involved in many school activities, I was always "out," never "in," and spent most of my time loving the other outcasts. Mocked with cries like, "Here comes Rachel--Rachel wants to be a missionary--that's right a missionary!" (with all kinds of wild emphasis), I never regret having chosen God above the crowd. And it was in those years of "persecution" (on a very small scale!) that God made real to me His unparalleled greatness and the importance of my pleasing Him over man. The perseverance it took to keep walking those halls would be the same I'd need to keep walking in China.
My missionary "call" came as a result of hearing stories firsthand and watching missionary slides in church. The only job that ever seemed really fulfilling was to advance Christ's kingdom. And what better place to start than where 1/5th of the people God made lived. It was with a very clear sense of His peace and direction that I headed for Mainland China, after having fallen in love with the Chinese during a short-term mission experience (in Hong Kong!) in 1988.
Through my time as a single teacher, missionary wife, mother of six sons and now a pastor's wife, God continues to complete the process that began in a living room at age 5. My testimony now is of course much richer and deeper for the more significant trials God has taken me through since high school sneers and pranks. God has been so faithful to humble and love me, strengthen and equip me with the joy only He can give, even when uprooted (time and again) or losing Mark's mom shortly after our first son's birth. I'm so glad for Christ's grace and am as excited as ever to share this good news with others!
