About Us/Testimonies
Jesus said, "...I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)
We want to share our testimonies with you, of how we came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, as our Lord and Savior, and the path he has led us on since that time. He is so merciful, and anything good that is in us, is there because he has done the work in our lives.
Ken's Testimony
A hell bound sinner! There's no other way to describe my life before I came to Christ. I lived a riotous life of drunkenness, and women, with no thought for tomorrow, and no thought of life after ; as a matter of fact, I almost thought I was indestructible. Now I can look back and realize that I was just young and dumb!
My mother had taken us occassionally to a baptist church when she could, and if my dad was in one of his drinking moods and wouldn't let her go to church, she would at least try to send us to church without her.
After my dad died suddenly, when I was 16 years old, I stopped going to church, and ran with whatever wild crowd I wanted to follow, causing my mother much grief and sadness.
I married at the against my mother's advise, and entered a turbulent first marriage. In the midst of all the trials, I would sometimes go to church just on Easter or Christmas. In a sense I was just being religeous,because I didn't really have any time for God, I was my own boss.
On one Easter Sunday that I went to church, the Spirit of the Lord began to convict me of my sins, as the word of God was being preached and I repented and asked God to forgive me in the name of Jesus and come into my life.
Jesus came into my life and I now felt a new awareness that the Lord lived inside of me, but I didn't relinquish very much of the control of my life to him. I remained the boss, while Jesus remained a visitor.
After about a year had gone by, in which I had not been faithful to go to church on a regular basis, I got injured and hospitalized as the result of a football game I was involve with. I was in traction in the hospital for 6 weeks.
During this time, one of my younger brothers would come to the hospital and visit me. I did not like this brother very much, because when we were teenagers, he would secretly steal a lot of my possessions and sell them to buy himself . But he kept coming down to visit me and told me he had accepted Christ as his Savior, and also had been baptized with the Holy Spirit. I really wasn't that much interested in what he said about all that, but I did notice that he seemed to be a lot different. I watched his life carefully to see if he was just trying to trick me with another one of his scams, and I listened carefully to every word that came out of his mouth to see if I could uncover a lie.
When he came to visit, he would always talk about Jesus, and the little church where he was attending and the power of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I knew about Jesus, and I knew about church, but this baptism with the Holy Spirit was something new to me. I hadn't heard them talk about this in the baptist church.
Well, by brother just kept coming down to that hospital and visiting me throughout those long 6 weeks and talking about this baptism with the Holy Spirit. He also did many things for me, even lending me money to help with my families expenses while i was in the hospital. I was really impressed with the changes that I saw in him.
One day after i returned home from the hospial, he came by to invite me to church. He said they were having a guest speaker for a Friday, Saturday and Sunday meeting. I really didn't want to go, but he had been so nice to me, that I almost felt obligated to go.
When we arrived at the church that Friday night, the service had already started and as we walked in, the people were raising their hands and very quietly praying in a strange language that I had never heard of before. As we found our place in some chairs at the back of the room, the people kept praising and worshipping God with their hands raised up and speaking this strange language.
I had never in all my life seen or heard anything like this! But in that environment I felt the very presence of God like I had never felt in a church before. My only thought was: these people really know God! Their praise and worship and love for God was so sincere and heartfelt that i stood amazed. I was compelled to come to all the meetings.
At the last meeting, some of the elders asked me if I would like to be baptized in the Holy Spirit. I said, i don't even fully know what that means, but if it will help me love and worship God like you do, then, yes I want that.
They gathered around me and laid hands upon me, and began speaking in the Spirit, and before I knew it, a strange, but beautiful language came out of my mouth and I felt the presence of the Lord in a new and mighty way. Speaking in tongues was an exciting evidence of the baptism with the Holy Spirit, but to me, an even more exciting evidence of the Spirit's power was the new freshness of the Word of God. As I read the Bible, it became more alive to me and I began to understand it much more and desire to read it much more than I had before.
My wife did not share my enthusiasm, and we drifted further and further apart. She refused to come to church with me, and I went for several years alone. To make a long story short, she eventually left me for another man and eventually divorced me.
I was shattered and even contemplated , but the Lord's grace saw me through. In time, I met my current wife, Linda, and we have now been happily married for 25 years. We have two sons, Joshua 22 and Jeremiah 24.
Shortly after marrying Linda, the Lord led me into a prison ministry in Nashville, Tennessee in 3 different prisons and also a juvinile military camp. I was involved in prison ministry for 12 years. Linda and I also worked a food ministry for about 6 years, where we picked up food from stores and redistributed it to the poor of our commmuntity and surrounding areas.
In the year 2000, the Lord directed me to leave my job of 21 years and go to mission school with youth with a mission;y.w.a.am. in Weherhoueser, Wisconsin.
At the end of our schooling, we took our first mission trip to the island nation of Trinidad-Tobago, where we personally led 151 souls to Christ. During this trip, we both felt that the Lord was callling us into a new direction for our lives and that was as mission ambassadors to many nations.
We have now been to 10 different nations, with new invitations coming in almost daily. We have good relationships with many pastors in many nations and actually live with them when we visit their nation. We also have been instrumental in arranging for other mission people to visit nations that we have already been to and established contacts.
I have been blessed to write songs, sing and play the guitar as well as preach and teach the Word of God. I am currently working on getting a second cd recorded and in the midst of writing two books.
We live completely by faith, trusting the Lord for our daily substenance as well as the huge amount of finances that it takes to travel to other nations. He has never let us down.
So, the Lord was willing to take me, who was on the highway to hell with no time for God, and save me and cleanse me and baptize me in the Holy Spirit and power and use me for his purposes. He took me, who was a nobody going nowhere, and has made me a royal ambassador for Christ. I serve him out of my deep love and appreciation for what he has done for me.
His Friend,
Ken Conrey
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Linda's Testimony
I was raised in Roman Catholicism the first 14 years of my life. I had religion, but I did not have a relationship with the Lord.....
When I was 12 years old, there was a little in my math class that asked me the question, "Linda, don't you know that Jesus is coming back to the earth, and he is going to judge all the sinners, and don't you know that they are going to hell forever?" This comment struck fear into my heart, because I had no doubt that I was a sinner. I also had never been taught that Jesus was coming back to the earth again.....
I knew I was hell bound, but I did not know what to do about it. You see I had never been taught that I needed to be born again, as Jesus said in John 3:3.....
Over the next 2 years I lived in fear. I had asked my mom about Jesus' return, but she said, "Linda, people have been saying that for years, and it hasn't happened yet." This brought no comfort to my heart. From that point on, I began to seek spiritual things, but because my religion did not offer the answers I needed, I sought information in things of the occult.....
I had developed a istic attitude, because I knew there was nothing I could do to save myself. I knew I was going to hell, and so why not just go ahead and die? Wouldn't this put an end to my mental torments? was a consideration. One night I was so fearful, that I prayed to satan, and told him that if he would not hurt me when I got to hell, I would serve him. Thankfully, the God of Glory, did not leave me in this miserable condition.....
When I was 14 years old, I met my dear friend, Christine Carter, who began to share with me about the love of God, and how he sent Jesus to the earth, to pay the price for ALL my sins, so that I could have a living, loving, relationship, with the God that created me.....
Because I had been raised Roman Catholic, and she had been raised Pentecostal, she felt it would be better if we went to a more conservative, or shall we say quiet church, so as not to scare me with the penticostal experience. So we visited a Baptist church. We attended this church for about a month. I began to understand some of the things my friend in math class had shared with me 2 years before. That night, on June 15th, 1974, I made a decision to repent of my sins, and to give my heart, and life to the Lord Jesus. Transformation began from that very moment. I knew my life would never be the same! Fear was gone! I knew I was loved by God, and completely forgiven. I felt so clean and pure.....
From that time forward, my life was different. Four years later, I experienced the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, and the Lord taught me about the spiritual gifts, as listed in I Corinthians 12.....
After this experience, my life changed even even more dramatically, and I became very bold for the things of the Lord.....
Though I did not realize it, the Lord had me in the palm of his hand all the time, I just had to come to a place in my heart, where I would realize I truely had a need for him. I had to realize I was lost and undone, and had no way of saving or fixing myself. If I was going to be saved, from my hell bound destination, he was going to have to do it. He did!!
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Our Marriage
Linda had been living in Oregon, in 1980, when the Lord spoke to her to return to the home of her parents in the Nashville, Tennessee area. Linda relocated in May of that same year. Ken had been living in Florida when the Lord led him to the Nasville, Tennessee area in July of 1980, to pursue his dream of recording his music.
We did not realize it but at one point in time, we lived on the same street, within a half mile of each other. We met each other on February 4th 1981. After a short courtship, we married on June 14th of the same year. We lived in the city of Nashville, Tennessee for 6 years, before moving to the country life, just west of Nashville, in a little town called Kingston Springs. We bought some wooded land, and built our little cabin. The Lord blessed us with two children of our own. Jeremiah was born in 1982, and Joshua in 1984. |
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Prison Ministry
From 1981 to 1994 Ken and Linda were involved in prison ministry, though Linda stopped going, after about 10 months, due to the demands of motherhood. Prior to that, she accompanied her husband in ministering at the Womens Prison, in the middle Tennessee area. Ken continued the work in the prison ministry at Deberry Correctional Institute, CCA, & Riverbend Maximum Security Prison, until the spring of 1994, when the Lord called him out of that work. Ken & Linda also ministered in Centerville, Tennessee, at the Three Springs Wilderness Camp for troubled boys ages 12-18 during the years of 1992-1994. Many souls were won to Christ during this time, and the prison ministry served as a training ground for future ministry. |
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Food Ministry
In January of 1991, Ken and Linda started a food ministry in the middle Tennessee area to help the poor and needy, by providing food boxes to those in need of assistance. The focus of the food ministry, was to take goods, that would otherwise be discarded by local merchants (because the item had gone out of date, or was slightly damaged), and use them, as as tool to draw people to us that we could share Jesus, and his gift of salvation. In so doing, we gave people an opportunity to come to know him as their Lord and Savior. As each person would come for help, they would hear the gospel presented, and be given an opportunity to repent of their sins, and receive Jesus as their Lord & Savior. Food was given whether people received the Lord of not, because we saw it as an opportunity, not only to win souls to the kingdom, but also to plant the seed of God's word in their hearts. We serviced an average of 60 families per week, and also distributed to other food ministries in the surroungding counties. We resigned this ministry in 1997, when the Lord called us out of it, so Linda could focus on her own bible college studies, homelife, and the homeschooling of our 2 boys. |
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The Slow Years
From 1997 to the summer of 2001, our ministry life seemed a bit slow, though Ken did have opportunities to teach in the church, and assist with praise as worship, as he had for many years. Our focus turned more to family. Ken had been promoted in his job at that time into a management position, and was basically only ministering in our home church settings. Linda was focusing on getting our boys through their homeschooling, which was a 14 year process. Linda also completed her bible college studies and graduated with honors in 1999 from New Life Bible College in Cleveland, Tennessee. |
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The Trip That Changed Our Lives Forever!
In July of 2001 Linda and our son Joshua, went on a mission trip to Mexico with a Youth With A Mission group. It was a 10 day trip that would change our lives forever. While in Mexico, the Lord changed Linda & Joshua hearts, as they saw the power of God manifested to draw people unto himself, by the preaching of the word, in a way they had never seen before. Even with the language differences, somehow the people understood the message being presented, and gave their hearts to Jesus. Half way through this short mission trip, Linda realized she would be willing to do this type of work the rest of her life. She cried everyday because of the tremendous work God was doing in her heart, and in the lives of those around her. Joshua, who had been very shy, seemed to change overnight, and became very bold in the streets of Mexico to share about Jesus & the free gift of Salvation. Little did we know the changes the Lord had in store for us. |
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Moved by the Spirit of God...to Wisconsin??
Upon our arrival back from Mexico, life could not, would not ever be the same. As Linda shared with Ken the things that had happened in Mexico, and what the Lord had done in her's & Joshua's hearts. To remain as they had been before the trip, seemed impossible. God is so faithful. The day Ken had put Linda & Joshua on the bus for Mexico, was also the last day at his job where he had worked for 21 years. The Lord had told him, some weeks before, his time at that job was finished, and it was time for him to resign. So Ken resigned. Not knowing what was next; having no retirement; and not much of any savings to speak of. All we knew was the Lord said, "It's time to leave", and so Ken left! While in Mexico, Linda had learned that YWAM (Youth With A Mission), was about to have their first Family Discipleship School in Weyerhauser, Wisconsin. The director, David Holmbeck, of the Wisconsin base, was on the same Mexico mission trip, which Linda & Joshua has just returned from. David and his wife Paula, spoke with Linda about our family coming to the school, beginning in September 2001. Linda knew in her heart this was the Lord's direction. While Ken was at home alone, the Lord had told him, "When Linda returns from Mexico, she will bring direction." So when Linda shared with Ken about the training school, and the invitation to come, Ken thought this might be the Lord. Over the next 3 and a half weeks the Lord did the miraculous on our behalf, and we were able to have the needed down payment to go to the school. So stepping out on nothing but a prayer, and faith in God, and trust in his Word, we relocated to Wisconsin for 5 & a half months of school, in preparation for working in the mission field.
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The Lord Thrust Us Out To The Nations!!
As part of our schooling with YWAM, we had to go to another country, and practice what we had learned while in the schools training program. Our entire school went to the nation of Trinidad for 4 weeks. While in Trinidad, the Lord did a great work in Ken's heart. Prior to this time, though Ken has a great anointing as a teacher of the Word of God, he was not much for one on one evangelism. That changed in Trinidad. The Lord imparted a supernatural grace to him, and a love for the people, like he had never experienced before, and together, Ken, & Linda, started leading people to the Lord in the streets of Trinidad, through one on one evangelism. The fire had been lit, and we wanted to take this light of the Gospel to the whole world! Now, Ken also knew, our lives would never be the same. Though we did not continue working with YWAM, we have continued in the harvest fields of the Lord. Since March of 2002, we have ministered in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago, Ivory Coast, Kenya & South Africa. We have ministered in the cities, the jungles, and the hide-away places of the earth. We have sat at the table of governors, and eaten at the humble campfires in the bush areas of Africa. We have slept in hammocks, and lived in the most basic of surroundings. We have bathed in rivers with the piranha, and traveled in dugout canoes. We have ministered to tribes of people that had never heard the gospel before. Some people say, we have sacraficed alot to do what we do, but we must tell them, that when you have the opportunity to lead souls to Christ, and you experience the joy of seeing someone come to saving faith in Christ Jesus, no sacrafice it too great. The blessings and rewards far out wiegh the difficulties! We thank God that he has chosen us for this work. Please pray for us, as we are about our Fathers' business. |
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Who Are We Affiliated With?
We are affiliated with the body of Christ. We do not name ourselves to be of a particular denomination. We are Christian believers who seek to live our lives according to the Word of God, and seek to please him in everything we do. We affliate ourselves with those of like passion for the Lord, and enjoy meeting members of our Christian family through out the world. We are available for ministry, and have ministered in Christian churches of many denominations. |
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The Passing Of An Awesome Man Of God..
In November 2006 Pastor Ken passed away into the presence of the Lord, whom he served for so many years. His life made an impact on multitudes, and set the captives free, as he showed them the way to freedom by faith in Christ Jesus.
Ken will be sorely missed, greatly beloved, and forever rewarded for his love and ministry on this earth. His was a life that made a difference for so many. For more information go to our webpage entitled
"TRIBUTE TO KENNETH DUANE CONREY"
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