Well, I want to call Mike and Shea Lunger on up, so come on up, Mike and Shea. As you know, church. We have really enjoyed these last, I don't know, four or five years or so as folks are coming to our church and as they're going through the membership process, and we're getting to know them, to take an opportunity to hear how God has worked in their lives, to hear their testimonies. And so Shea and Mike, Steve and I met with them a few, oh, a month ago or so in our membership interview, a really sweet time getting to know them more. You guys have been here for a couple of years now, I think I said this morning. But we just wanted to give them an opportunity to share how Christ has worked in their lives with us so we can be praying for them better and to get to know you guys more. So I'll hand you this microphone and you can take it away, Mike. Thank you. Hello, everybody. If you don't know me, I'm Shea. I'm sorry. You can tell. I'm nervous. I'm Mike Lunger, and this is my wife, Shea, my beautiful wife, Shea. I wish my story was different. I wish I could stand before you and say that I was in a family born and raised in a godly family, but that wasn't the case. I'm going to start a little early, I'm going to speed up through it too. When I was a child, me and my brothers and my sisters, we would always, the time that we did go to church, we came from a Catholic background, it was with our grandparents. And our grandparents lived in Hayward, and we lived in Dublin. Both of my parents went to the Catholic school, but they did not practice the religion. They didn't go. There was times my mom would take us on Easter and Christmas, but that's about it. But my grandparents, they would be in the Bible, they would be in the Word. And every time we got to see them, we'd spend time with them, but it was not so often. And I just remember being a little boy that probably around seven, seven years old, my grandparents moved to Idaho. So that all stopped. The church stopped going, we stopped going, but my parents thought it would be great if I went to catechism. I hated catechism. In fact, I'd go out the front door, go out, jump over the fence, look at my Mickey Mouse watch, and say, OK, it's time to come back. And I'd lie. I never went once until we had to go, all the families and the children had to go in front of the priest. And they went around, talked what they learned. Then he came to me, and he knew. He knew I never went. So I just didn't have any desire. And as I grew, I just was kind of mad because of my grandparents going. And then just I felt that they left. And I just lost hope in God and just didn't want to follow God. And I'm going to speed it up now. I remember when I got into the apprenticeship and one of the jobs I went to, I come up to, and it was a foreman. Electrical, sorry. And I was in the apprenticeship. The foreman came up to me, he says, what do you know about the Bible? And I said, I know nothing about the Bible. And he goes, well, on this job, you're going to learn about the Bible. Well, and he says at lunch, we're going to do that. So every time lunch came, I left. I left the job. I ran. And he would ask, where was I? And he says, ah, my wife didn't fix my lunch. I had to get lunch. So I just stayed clear away from God. So speeded up. Shay and I got married. And when we got married, my uncle had passed away at an early age. And we got to know the pastor. And the pastor married us. And in fact, Shay went through. RCA to get baptized, so we could get married in a Catholic church. Shay and I kept that going, but there was no heartfelt... I didn't know the gospel. We were just going Sunday to Sunday to Sunday, and just going. There was no difference and no change in our life. I didn't feel guilty over my sin, nor did I feel condemned or anything. I was just living my life. And I remember our daughter was born in September in 1994, and I felt an immense It just came on me, all this guilt at once, and I didn't understand where it was coming from. As soon as I got off work, all I knew was from my Catholic background, to talk to a priest. So, I went and talked to a Catholic priest, and we were face-to-face. And I confessed my sins, and it was not just sin at that time, it was just a lifetime of sins that had been bothering me. And we sat there and talked, and he said, I abolish you from your sins. I walked away from that not feeling any different, still feeling guilty, very heavy. and just very depressed. And it came around Christmas time, and I was going to work, and I was running a job. Now I had graduated from the apprenticeship, and now I was actually running work. I knew what that feeling was and what it was coming from. It was coming from my sin, my guilt, and it just came on me. It was heaviness, very much heaviness, so I said, I'm going to see if I can find some Christmas music to cheer me up. Well, I found a radio station. It was a Christian radio station. And it caught my attention. And I was listening to this pastor, and he was talking about that we didn't need to go to a priest and confess our sins. We could go to Jesus, our High Priest. And I heard that, and my ears were open. I pulled off the freeway. I had to listen to the whole message, because I'd never heard anything like that. During that time, he started preaching the Gospel, the Gospel message. I've been in the Catholic Church, and I'm sure they preach, but I just couldn't hear it. I didn't have ears to hear. I didn't have eyes to see. And I heard this for the very first time. It finally brought joy to me. I don't know at that time if I was saved. I just had a different hope in me that I never had before. I came home and I told Shea the message I heard. And I was listening to that station all the time. I would sneak in the bathroom, and I'd be in the bathroom. I had one of those old walkmans. I was listening to sermons. I was listening to the old hymns. And Shay goes, you're in the bathroom so long. Why are you in the bathroom? I go, I got to go, Shay. So then I go, I can't stay in here long. She's going to get mad at me. So I would just say, oh, I'm going to go do yard work. I can listen to my walkman and listen to these sermons. And I started digging into the word, deeply into the word. I just had a hunger and a thirst. thirst for it more than ever, and I was just being fulfilled through reading the gospel, and just reading the scriptures, and just praying for the first time. So a Sunday came, and Shay says, we're going to go to church. And I says, I'm not going there anymore. She goes, what? It was a Catholic church. And I go, I'm not going there anymore. So Shay called the priest and said, he wants to talk to you. And I says, I'm not talking to him. I'm not going to that church anymore. I'm done. But I didn't know where to go. I didn't know anybody. I didn't have anybody that ever shared the gospel. That was the first time that I believe I ever heard the gospel message. So I kept going until I found, it was about probably Easter is when it was, I told Shay, I go, I'm gonna go try a new, there's a Baptist church here in Brentwood where we lived in the Bay Area. And I says, I'm gonna go to that church and I'm gonna check it out. I felt like I was at home for the first time. I felt peace. Shea said I was glowing when I came home. Finally, I said, Shea, you've got to come back. She said, I don't want to go to another church. I said, please, please. She came the following Sunday. But that Sunday, the missionaries were there, and she did not like it. And I go, please, Shea, you've got to come back. You've got to hear this pastor. You've got to come. Please, please. So she finally agreed to come, and she came. And so we came. And just early on, I wrote down some that helped me getting through. When I heard 1 John 1.9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And I just started digging into the scriptures. I digged into Romans 3.10-31, Proverbs 3.5-6. And just, Shea finally started to go into the church with me. And it was a bigger, bigger, bigger church. And she got upset at me. And we got to know the pastor really well. And I said, Shay, we're going to go to a smaller church. I want to go to a smaller church. I want to be more knit with the guys. I don't feel like this is a home. And she fought with me. And she went and talked to the pastor. Because we found this church. And he says, Shay, follow your husband. It's a great church. And we went to another church. So we started going to another church. A little bit here what I wrote at the end here is, I began over time to see Jesus as my only hope of salvation. I knew I needed a Redeemer. I knew my heart wasn't right. I needed renewing of my mind. I prayed for faith to be committed to Christ, to be purchased out of the slave market of sin. I can't give a particular day or time when I came to salvation. I saw that I loved Christ more than myself. I found a strong desire to follow him, and I was not ashamed of the gospel. Isaiah 53, 5, but he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. What I came to is all of us have fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3.23. So the pressing question of justification is how can an unjust person ever be justified in the presence of a righteous and holy God? We are justified when God imputes Christ's righteousness to our account. And that's what happened to me, and that's what happened to all of us. I missed your calling. You're very good at this. Yeah, there is 10 minutes on the dot. Corey C., are you proud? I'm timing him. Um, so I decided to, I was going to write mine down because otherwise I can get a little aloof and all over the place because I have a really long story too. And, um, oh, that's why I can't see. Um, so I just thought, okay, I'm going to write it down while I was looking through my phone. And I remember that back in 2019 I had written, um, just written out my testimony, my salvation, uh, time frame. And so I got that out and I read it and I'm like, Oh, I'm, I'm going to use this and then just add to it a little bit because it really put into very poetically the intricate parts of my heart and the massive work. that God got when he had a jigsaw like me, because I was a million-piece jigsaw when he found me. So I want to share that with you, and I'm just going to read it. I'll try to add a few things here. But faith is a peculiar word, isn't it? Its literal translation, according to Siri, is complete trust or confidence in someone or something. However, I love the biblical translation found in Hebrews 11.1. Faith is the confidence of what we hope for and assurance of what we cannot see. Yet in scripture, wait, hold on. Oh, yeah. Both point to believing in someone or something, and both point to having hope with confidence. Yet in scripture, it is demonstrating blind trust in Jesus and the path that he has before me. It's intimidating to release the control of my life into the hands of one that I have not physically met. But that decision is what permanently changed the entire course of my life. Before I knew God, I was a confused, sad, and insecure little girl with very big daddy issues and a lot of jealousy towards others. I was always very tender, and my dad would call me dramatic, but I was really just a tender-hearted little girl, so that, him being a hard man, he didn't know what to do with me. Let's see, where am I? I did everything possible to receive his love and approval. He was a hard man, as I just said, but it didn't stop me. When he divorced my mom, I thought it was my fault. Was I not good enough? Why did he divorce my mom? Why did he leave my sister and I? Why was our family being torn apart? We had this perfect little family like everyone wanted to hang out with the McBees. My dad was a fireman and my mom was a great cook and so we had a pool and our life was great until it wasn't and it was just earth-shattering. And so as a tender-hearted little girl, there goes my daddy off with someone else. So why is our family being torn apart? I was only 11 at this time, but yet I was at that time prompted into being more of like a 20-year-old because my mom needed a lot of support. These why questions captivated me for most of my young life and they left me searching for answers from anyone and everyone of influence, just not God. I had not even heard of God. This is really a true story. I didn't know anybody that went to church. I didn't have anybody that invited me to church. The only way that I'd ever really heard of God, and I'm sorry if this is offensive, but it's in swear words because they were common in my house. That was the only way I ever heard the word Jesus Christ. I didn't know who that was. Why does he keep saying this? And like I said, I never went to church. I was never invited. I want to pause for a second and say that is why inviting people is so important. And that's what I do. You can ask Mike. We can be in McDonald's. And I'm like, hey, do you want to go to our church? Where do you live? We go to church right here in Placerville. You can ask him. He's like, can we just get through the line? But I do like to do that because I was never invited. So I think things would have been different, but God had a plan. Let's see, I didn't know anyone else that also was in faith, so my options to answer these burning questions were pretty much secular. I was so confused and broken, and I looked at other people's lives and saw happiness and joy, just not really in ours. My mom was a mess, my sister was really confused, so I became her protector. I would ask myself, why them and not us? I read every Tony Robbins book there was about fixing me. showing me my worth and my purpose and still I was just left unsatisfied and really yearning for something more. I just didn't know what. Not long after this daunting search, I found God. I was then 19. Mike and I were dating, and he talked about his aunt and uncle, and they were going to the Catholic Church. I remember that they had a sign above their house, and it says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And I looked at Mike, and I go, can I still go in for dinner? And I was very serious. That was a really threatening message to me. I'm not welcome in this house of the Lord. I don't even know, what are we going to do? Oh my gosh, are they going to put holy water on me? I had no idea at this point. But they were wonderful people, and I really craved at this point what I used to call religious faith, something that was systematic and had timelines and just had some sort of structure, because my life didn't have that. Shortly thereafter, Uncle Tommy passed away, and it was really sudden. He was in his forties, and he was really a mentor to Mike and I. He was somebody that modeled faith, and he loved the Lord, and he was goofy and funny. I didn't know that people of faith could be funny. I thought they were all really serious, and so we just loved him. So, that's when we started going to the Catholic Church, was after that. I began to recognize that even as a Catholic, It was still about my performance. At least this is my experience. And it triggered my biggest fear as it relied on my abilities, which never measured up. And believe me, I tried. I knelt when I was supposed to. I stood when I was supposed to. I raised my hands and said my prayers and memorized the creeds and the different things that they had us do. They never had us go to scripture in the church that we were going to. And as a matter of fact, when I was pregnant with my daughter, we were getting her baptized or wanting to get her baptized and she was just a baby at the time and obviously and I mean little and it was six months when we finally brought her to the we had to go through a class with like 12 other people and I just remember that priest looking at me and he says young lady why did you wait so long to baptize your baby and I said because she has colic and she would have screamed so loud, it would have been miserable for her and for the people that were attending. And he says, do you understand that your daughter would have gone to hell if she had died? And I looked at Mike, and I argued with the priest, I probably shouldn't have, and I didn't know scripture that well, and I said, I don't believe that a good Lord and Savior would send a baby to hell. My baby was sick. And so that's where that came in, and it was just a really, really low point. And you know, to be, I'll be really honest with you here, I put in here that at my lowest point, I was thinking very critically about escaping my options here on earth. And I mean that. And then 1997 happened, and that's when I found Jesus. I went to a, you know, I'd always, at this point, we were going to the Catholic Church, so I knew about God, I knew about Jesus, but like Mike said, there just wasn't this penetrating change that I kept, well, I really hadn't heard of. I'd never heard the term born again. I hadn't heard of being renewed or sanctified. We didn't talk about any of those kind of things. And so I also had this heaviness of like, oh, I just don't feel, I'm not, you know, having this experience of really getting to know this God, I was terrified of Him. And I mean the bad kind of fear, where, you know, it was scary. So anyway, where am I? Do you know? Oh yeah, thank you. So we had gone to a Women of Faith conference, and I had never been to anything like that before. And it was my mom and my sister and me. And I was seven months pregnant with our second child, Tate. And I was a little tad bit emotional, just a teensy. And that experience was something that I'll never forget. I was very emotional and through prayers and scripture and people sharing their stories. I mean, some people like me that actually had sinful lives that didn't lead these structured lives of being born and raised in faith. I really, like Mike, envied that also. So I just leaned in, and I was listening to everything that they were saying, and they were talking about what it meant to be born again, and I learned that I didn't have to necessarily change my ways to be born again, that Jesus would do that through the sanctification process. I could literally come as I was, and that was an anomaly to me. I'd never heard anything like that. I just needed to ask Jesus into my heart and believe that He's the Son of God who died for my sins, and that His love is unconditional. And again, that was radical truth for me in my life at that point, 1997, almost 28 years ago. And I couldn't stop crying at that point. I just remember just falling to my knees, and I said, why would He love me like that? And they explained to me what I just read, and that was transforming for me. At that point, we were going to the church that Mike was talking about, a couple of them. First, we went to a bigger Baptist church, and then he moved us to the smaller ones. Here's what I can tell you, though. It was after that, through my recognizing who Christ was and who I was to Him, not what I needed to perform or try and be, because you don't know what you don't know. Faith is a process. I think we're working on faith until the day that we see Him on the other side, in Heaven. Anyway, he patiently lifted my head, gently putting back the pieces of my deeply shattered heart. He showed me how much he loves me. He showed me how it is to walk in my weakness, and that's where I found his strength. He showed me to keep fighting and walk in a deeper dependence on him and not myself or anybody else. He did not make me walk across burning coals of fire like the self-help guru, Tony Robbins. He put out the smoldering flames before they even touched my feet. And I began, that's metaphorically obviously, but really he was putting out a lot of fires in my life. Like I said, I was a chaotic mess. I began to understand the gaping hole in my life and why it was there. It's because I'm nothing without Jesus, absolutely nothing. Jesus loves me in a way that no human could, so I no longer had to look for human love. And it's not based on my efforts, but on his sacrifice. It's never based on what I could do for him, but what he could do through me. That fragile heart of mine, which also became my arch nemesis because it was broken often, is something that he uses regularly to magnify his love to others through my obedience. I'm still a chaotic work in progress, but no matter what I'm facing, I know he's right beside me, and he's parting the waters, and he's moving the mountains, and he's extending out his loving hand, saying, trust me, Shay. So I do. Even when there are no indicators of a solid ground beneath my feet, I step towards him, knowing the path for my purpose, and that it was planned before I was even in my mother's womb, The path that he has for me is good and prosperous. Will there be trials? Of course. But nothing is impossible with God. He goes behind me. He goes before me. He goes besides me. So here I walk, once blindly into a territory that I did not know. but now alongside my loving Savior who will never leave me nor forsake me. His word is my truth, the Holy Spirit is my guide, and Jesus is my way. I'm grateful to be a child of God and saved by the King that gave everything for me to have eternal life with him. I was once told that even if it was just me that he would die for, he still would have gone to the cross. I don't know where I heard that, but that was penetrating truth for me. And here's what I have to say, that's what it means to be chosen. So that's my story. It's been a process of 38 years, I think. Yeah, 38 years that we've been walking in faith, and it took a while. I wanted to read you something. I always look for encouragement, too. It says read in silence, and I'm going to disobey that right now. But if any of you want a copy, it's just a good reminder. I, like you, put reminders near my computer or near the places that I'm looking at. Sometimes I write them in lipstick on my mirror and read Psalm 139. So it says, thank you for carrying the cross that I could never carry. By your wounds, I am healed. By your sacrifice, I'm redeemed. By your love, I'm forgiven. By your grace, I'm saved. By your guidance, I'm found. In your mercy, I find strength. In your light, I find clarity. In your word, I find the way. I love you, Jesus, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. All glory be to you, my Lord and Savior, my eternal love. And if you love Jesus, maybe you can say amen. And that's my story. I'm grateful to hear all that you shared, and it's so evident the Lord has transformed your lives, and we're so encouraged to be getting to know you. I didn't ask you to prepare anything for this, but are there a couple of ways that we can be praying for you as a church family just in this season of life? There's been a number of trials, I know, but if there's some ways that we can be praying for you, we want to be able to do that and even to pray for you now, so. When we moved up here, we've had a business for 17 years as electrical contractors, and I've helped Mike run it. For most of my life, I gave up working, because I desperately wanted to be home with my kids, raise them, keep them on the right path, and raise other people's kids, I found out. But I loved that, I loved being a mom, and I wouldn't change that for anything in the world. Now that we moved up here, work was not as abundant as we had hoped, and so we took one part of Mike's retirement, but we both need to go back to work full-time, and we have the energy and the strength and the endurance to do that, and so we're both just really needing guidance and prayer on where the Lord wants us, and I have a couple opportunities coming up. I'm just starting looking for entry levels, something, and it's weird because I haven't been back in the full-time workforce where someone tells me where to be at what time since 2003. It's been a long time. I'm not nervous. I'm excited. I think I have a lot to offer, and we must do it. It's not an option. That would be an amazing prayer, and for Mike, I'll let him tell, but he's looking to be an inspector in this area with his experience, and I'll let him say what he requests. Yeah, same thing. I'm doing a ride along. I'm going to be leaving on Tuesday to finish up a couple of projects in the Bay Area. I still have clients in the Bay Area that want me to do it, but that's just too far. It's just trying to come back and be away from Shea. I get to stay with our friends from our former church, but it's just not right, and I need to be home here. And so most of the people I talked to, They said that, you know, I don't care if you don't have your license. I had to close my license down because I was a union contractor. I didn't want to. I love it. I have a passion for it. But most of my clients will say to me, but they're in the Bay Area, they say, I don't care if you have a license. You're my contractor. So I'll go down there. But I want to really stop that. I've got a ride along coming this Tuesday, if you guys would pray for me. Maybe there's some other opportunities, but Tuesday, or Wednesday, I'm going to stay in Brentwood. I'm going to ride along with an inspector early in the morning, what it is when he gets in the office, does his reports, looks at everything, and then all day with him, then come back and do the reports, and find out what exams I need to take. With my background, uh... working in the trades for thirty five years and and also run my own business that uh... the inspectors that i've talked to both of them i said am i too old for this should i give this up this is no you've got so much experience and and uh... with with what you're doing and and what i like about it i don't have to work full-time if i want to work part-time or full-time whatever i want to do it because uh... i i love uh... being here i love this church i mean Just seeing God's hand in this. When we were down in the Bay Area, we had sold our house, and we were thinking about moving out of state. Shay was at one of your Bible studies with her sisters from Christ, and she called me and said, Get ready, we're going to go to Placerville. Placerville, what's in Placerville? She goes, we're going to go look at a home. And I said, Shea, it's 2 o'clock. And this was in the fall. And I said, it's going to get dark. She goes, we'll go to dinner afterwards. And she goes, all right. So we came here. We looked at the place, and we fell in love with the property. There were two other couples bidding on it, and they had to go through our business to make sure our business and everything else was good. We prayed about it. I said, Shay, if it's God's hand that wants us to go there, we're going to pray about it. We're not going to be upset. He has something better for us. But we got it, and here's where we are. We knew right away that we wanted to find a church, so we went to a couple of local churches. It just wasn't what we have here. The greeting was cold, and we just didn't feel comfortable there. Then we went to another church that had more new believers. We just said, okay, well, one of the people that were at that church, we were real close to us, and they said, we're going to be moving to Kentucky. They had been telling us about meeting Mike and Judy Jo. They said, you guys got to meet Mike and Judy Jo. Well, they had our going away party, and we went to the restaurant. There was an accident, so we got there late, and the whole group was sitting up there. Shea, Todd and I were sitting down below, and Mike, who I've never met, came and sat down and said, Hey, we're supposed to meet. And then our food comes, he goes, hey, are you going to pray over your food? And so we did. And then he started telling me about the church. And I said, that is what I'm looking for. I want to go. And we came that Sunday. And we've been here ever since and never just left. And I love that the truth is being preached. I love that both of you. are just strong pastors in the word. We're encouraged. Every Sunday we meet somebody new here. People come up to us and we'll be in here and the lights will get turned off. We fill it home here and you've made us feel that way and we're so happy to be here and we're glad to be part of the family, happy to be part of the family. You know, so thank you very much for the opportunity. Just be praying for us over these things. And we obviously want to do God's will, whatever God has us to do. And we've continued to trust in Him in so many ways. And He's seen us through so many things together. And just like Pastor Corey was saying, we've gone through some tragedies over the years. And just God's been faithful to us. And God has protected us and kept us strong in our faith. We haven't walked away. We have a strong love for each other and we encourage each other and strengthen each other each and every day.