First of all, I was born.  I was the first born child of Duane and Char Anderson in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin.  I am proud of my Irish, German, Danish, and "a smidgen" of English heritage.  My parents, and their parents before them, prepared the way for me with a godly Christian heritage.

It was important to my parents that I be in church as soon as possible; so I was in church before I was even a week old.  My parents taught us at home how to understand what we had heard at Sunday School and church.  I could quote John 3:16 before I was knee-high to a grasshopper! I knew that Jesus loved the whole wide world and that He died to take away their sins.

And then, all of a sudden, on Sunday morning October 10, 1971, it dawned on me and my four-year-old brain that I......Missi Anderson.....was part of that "whole wide world" and that I had sins Jesus needed to take away.  I went to the front of the church at the end of the service and told the Pastor that I needed to be saved.  He asked my Grandma, Edith Nelson (now Edith Davidson) to speak with me.  She took me by the hand and led me to a quiet back staircase where we sat down and she spread open her big black Bible.  I can still remember looking at the pages and "reading" along with her the verses she had underlined in red.

Romans 3:23 says "all have sinned" and even at just four I had certainly been bad enough times to know this included me.  "Come short of the glory of God" means not to be able to measure up to the same level as God.  I wasn't a drunk or a murderer but I definitely knew what it felt like to fall short.

Romans 6:23 says "the wages of sin is death."  The word wages makes me think of an old fashioned scale.  When I compare how holy God is on one side of the scale with how not holy I am because of sin, the only thing that can balance it all out is for me to receive death.

Romans 5:8 begins with that wonderful word "but"!  "But God commendeth His love toward us..." Commendeth means He showed and demonstrated and actively imposed toward me.  While I was still a sinner and couldn't be in His holy presence, He loved me.  He loved me so much that He made a way for me to be able to have that sin cancelled out and be "in balance" with Him. CHRIST who is holy just like God the Father took the death part in my place!

"...but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."  He wants me to be able to be with Him so much that He used His own holiness to balance out my sin and His righteousness.  Only God could do something so wonderful and so amazing!

I clearly remember bowing my little head and asking Jesus to take away my sins and come live in my heart.  I was giving up any hope of trying to be good enough to make the scale balance out.  And now I live my whole life to please the One who gave so much for me.  He paid my penalty and made me free.  It's just like the slave who is bought and then set free.  Many times redeemed slaves would stay and work for the new master out of gratitude and love.  That is me.

I was baptized two years later.  I have gotten my eyes off of God and not kept Him as my focus at times.  But I want to serve Him better and better each day.  I want to tell others about how He took away all of my sin and made me pure.  And now my life is dedicated to His ministry and His work so that I can do just that!