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I’m looking right at the other half of me.” I started with the goal of becoming like him. My brother was a leader with a high status in the community. He was also a Christian. So when he asked me to join him for Sunday evening service, I was excited, but I also felt a little nervous. I had never been to a church. After the service, my brother took me to meet his pastor. A man walked up to us and asked, “Are you Michael’s brothers?” I said yes. Then he asked if we wanted to try to be saved. We both said yes. So he started talking to us. He shared the way of Jesus with us, and he explained about sin and how Jesus had paid the penalty for it. The Pastor asked us if we were ready to be baptized. I said yes, of course! A group of church members held us over the water, as my brother gave his testimony that God changed his life. I also told them how God had come into my life. We were both saved. I had never felt so clean. I started feeling so free that night. I decided to go to church with my brother for the rest of the week. I wanted to be baptized. I wanted to be saved. It took me a while, but I finally committed my life to Jesus. At the age of eight, I finally gave up sin. I prayed a prayer that night that said, “Jesus, I’m going to give up sin. I’m going to turn from your way, from my family, and from the world. Jesus, I’m going to give up smoking, drugs, drinking, all kinds of stuff, and live for you.” And that night at church, I made a promise to God that I would not hang out with gang members, do drugs, smoke, or drink anymore. I decided that I would live for God’s way of life. After a few years, I realized that I couldn’t give up all the vices in one night. So I didn’t drink or smoke every night. I just said no on occasion. But I did give up all the sin that I could, whenever I wanted to. So over the next few months, I gave up all of my drugs. I stopped going to church. Instead of trying to please God, I gave up. I knew that I had a decision to make. It was almost six in the morning. Would I give up my whole life, or would I give up the one thing that I could give up right now? To be honest, I was too lazy to get off drugs. They were so easy to get. But something kept tugging at me. After a couple of months, I started thinking about my life. What kind of example was I? What kind of example would God be when he looked at me? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my attitude wasn’t like his. My attitude wasn’t like God’s, so I had to change it. So one night I knelt down and asked God for forgiveness. I didn’t know if he would forgive me. The next day I went out and gave up all my drugs. That night when I went to sleep, I decided to give up everything else that I could give up. I was going to become a new creation. In that moment, I felt like I had a new life. The changes in my life were different than what I thought they would be. I was able to quit smoking cold turkey, which was something I had tried several times before. But I couldn’t have done it without God’s help. And in the end, that was all I really wanted to do—to be free. It was a hard thing to do, but it made me a better person. So even though it was hard, it was good, because I got more done than I ever did before. I have learned to go to church every Sunday. When people talk about their faith, I ask them questions. I try to be their friend. And even though I am only fifteen, I really try to live like Jesus. Now I get up every morning to go to church, like he did. And when people tell me that they are Christians, I feel like I belong to a community of faith. That’s all God has done. And through that community of faith, I found myself living for Jesus. By the grace of God, his family can be a shining example of the love of God to others. If we will follow his example, we will be able to give people a relationship with Jesus. It’s very exciting. I’m not ashamed of my family. I didn’t start out to be famous, but my family went from complete shame and embarrassment to being a great example. My family was made up of gang members, drug addicts, and thieves. My family doesn’t belong on television. My family is from a bad neighborhood, but people say we are something special. Now we are all Christians, and we love each other. I know a lot of people who don’t have that kind of support. It’s one of the best things that ever happened to me. I grew up in a world where some people didn’t want to be saved. But with God, he has saved people from the worst part of life. And now they can be a part of this wonderful community of faith. Every week in my church, I pray for these people. I try to speak to them about my personal experience of God’s love. I pray that they can follow my example, which is my father’s and my sister’s example. In college, I hope to study Bible—maybe to be a pastor or teacher. I’ve never really thought of going on television, but now I would like to take a job as a missionary in Brazil. I want to go to Brazil so that I can bring God’s love to the people there. I would like to be a missionary one day, but first I have to graduate from high school and college. I know God has plans for me, and he wants me to go to college. But when I’m finished there, I can go wherever God wants me to go. As long as I live, I want to be an example. It’s been hard to be different, but I have tried my hardest to do what God asked me to do. He has been faithful to me. The hardest thing for me was to get out of my own way and trust him. That’s the secret: trust him. Don’t try to do it on your own. Trust him to keep you. God has his ways, and you don’t need to know them now. My story is about what can happen when you try to follow God. If people give up the world and their family, they will find a better way to live and a better way to be. In Jesus, people will find God’s grace and all the blessings they have been looking for. My best-known poem, “The Story of Ezekiel,” is about a child who goes to church. The story is about an old woman who takes her to church and teaches her how to live for Jesus. I had read it in the Book of the Year, when I was in the fourth grade, and I decided to read it again as a sixth grader. When I read it again, I remembered the first line: “I’m seven and my brother is six.” But when the class started reading it, they changed it to, “I’m seven and my brother is six. My father’s name is Ezekiel, and he’s a saint.” The class kept the name Ezekiel, and they changed the age of the brothers. One day when I got home, my brother came to my house and said, “I am sorry. I didn’t want to get in trouble. I’m sorry. It just popped into my mind, and it sounded good, and I didn’t think you would get in trouble.” But when I read my poem at a high school, there were students who told me that I should change the names in the poem, because their teacher was mad at me for changing it. So I changed the names to their real names, and when it went to the high school, the school did not notice. The teacher thought it was okay. Since then, I have read the poem in many high schools, and it is very popular. It also has been read by a few politicians. For the past six years, I have helped write a newspaper column called The Greetings section. I get up every day at 6:30 a.m. to go and help my mother. Sometimes I ride my bike to church on the subway. The ride takes an hour and a half. My brother and I have different grades in school. We are both in high school now. I’m getting an education, and I want to go to school for computer science. I like to work with other people. This is my chance to use my voice to speak out. When I do, I want to let people know how much God loves them. He wants us to be saved. And he wants us to give God the glory.