A Forever Home

Hello my brothers and sisters in Christ. I’ve never done anything like this but I honestly have no idea what else to do or where to turn to so I turned to God this morning and He led me here. I know that He is our provider! 

Let me intoroduce myself quickly. My name is Stephanie Morningstar and I’m a 32 yr old mother of two. I came from a very broken and abusive “home”. Being raised in an environment of abuse and drug use we were homeless a lot of my childhood. Due to this my mother and I developed a very unhealthy and unpleasant mother/daughter relationship. As a teenager I fell into the darkness of addiction and struggled with it for years. This made my relationship with my mother even worse as we were both addicts and broken. 

Several years ago, in 2011, something incredible happened. Life changing! I was sitting in the shallows of the Boise River on a mid August summer afternoon. I had heard about Jesus and do believe in what the Bible said even though I really had no idea what the words within it truly meant. As I sat there I started thinking about Jesus and how active He really is in peoples’ lives. I wondered what it was like. I wondered if the things I had heard were just bedtime stories or if the testimonies I had heard throughout my life here and there where real. As I let my finger tips barely touch the water flowing past me making little ripples in the current I thought to myself “Getting baptized might be a neat experience but getting baptized in living water would be absolutely incredible!” 

The moment that thought danced through my mind I started hearing soft music playing in the distance. As a lover of music it immediately caught my attention. I couldn’t make out what kind of music or any lyrics. All I could hear was a beautiful tune floating in the wind. So, me being me, I got out of the river and started wondering through Julia Davis Park following the the music notes skipping in the breeze. The music began to get louder and louder and soon I found a crowd of people gathered around a small stage worshipping God! I was so overwhelmed with surprise and joy that I couldn’t stop smiling. 

As I stood on the outskirts of the crowd and felt the music run through my veins I cracked a joke to myself about there being “baptisms in the river today”. I’m not sure why but I felt my spirit being tugged forward through the crowd. Pretty soon I was in the front of the crowd other than the couple of dozen small children dancing in front of the stage. Moments later the music calmed and a man began walking across the stage. At that time the small children began to move themselves from the front of the stage to find their parents in the crowd. One by one the front of the stage slowly became empty leaving nothing but a large banner about waist high across the front. 

As the man began to speak into a microphone my eyes started filling up with tears as I read the banner directly in front of me staring me in the face. In huge bold letters the banner read “BAPTISMS TODAY!”

My mind and heart were so overwhelmed and shocked that the man’s voice was drowned out by the sounds of the whispering wind, water trickles from the nearby river and birds chirping. I finally looked up at the man speaking just in time to hear him say “If you are ready to surrender your life to Jesus Christ follow me down to the river to be baptized!” 

At that point it did not even feel like I was in control of my body. It felt like a dream. A very vivid one that I could not prevent. I walked down a dirt path with dozens of other people led by the man who was speaking. His name was Pastor Bob. One by one I watched as a dozen of people or so get into the river and get baptized. I felt my heart start racing, my palms start sweating and my breathing start to become labored and heavy.

I walked as quickly as I could into the water and flung myself at Pastor Bob in excitement. He laughed, smiled at me in the most loving way anyone had every smiled at me and spoke softly in my ear about the love Father God had for me and told me about salvation and baptism before he told me to hold my breath and dunked me into the river. 

Once I was under the surface of the water everything seemed to immediately slow to a snail pace. Birds flying above the water, the current caressing my body and the movement of bodies blurred above water level. All I could hear was a gentle voice of a man say “Well done my beautiful child.” 

I WAS SHOOKETH!

I knew what I was hearing was the voice of God! 

Pastor Bob pulled me up out of the water and the world looked brighter, more beautiful. My heart and my mind were more clear than ever before! Joy and peace swept over me like a waterfall! 

This changed my life forever! I learned the difference between religion and relationship and within months my relationship with my mom had healed completely! I now have several years clean and so does my mom! 

The thing of it is that not all of my family believes in our Lord and Savior which has brought me to one of my missions in life. To show my family the love of Jesus on a level they could never imagine. I know that my mom believes in God and Jesus Christ but she doesn’t really have much of a relationship with him. I pray for her often and she has even let me pray with her/over her. I truly believe if my mom surrendered all of herself to Jesus her life would change drastically and her testimony would be so inspiring! 

This brings me to why I am making this crowdfunding thing. I’m making it for my mom. 

She sent me a message this morning saying that she needed to some how come up with $10,000 to put a down payment on the house she is living in or the city will sell it to the highest bidder. If she could make this down payment she could finish paying the rest in payments of $300/month. She is on disability due to having a couple of heart attacks over the last few years but she can make rent and pay her other bills with her disability. 

Please help me bless my mom with a forever home.  I love her so much and I know Jesus does as well! She has had to move so many times in here life and we were homeless most of my childhood. She is becoming closer and closer to Jesus, is clean and has finally became the mother I longed for my entire life. I just want her to be able to stay in the home she has been in for the last few years and not have to up root her entire life to find a new home. 

Thank you all for taking the time to read my long story about my salvation and the healing of my relationship with my mama. God bless all of you! 

P.S. The picture I’ve uploaded is a picture of my mom (left), my twin brother and my baby sister.My mom’s name is Vincie.