The following was submitted to younglife.org by Erin Pettengill, a Young Life alumna.

High school is a turbulent time indeed. I started my high school time like many others, not knowing where I was going or what to do with my life. I was not involved in any church group growing up. In high school I started hearing about Young Life club. My brother had been involved in the group before me, and occasionally the group had met at our house.

I soon became very involved. The second year of high school I went on a summer trip where I accepted Christ as my personal Savior. The following year I went to Haiti on a summer mission trip with my Young Life group. I had come to understand the beginning of what it meant to be a Christian. Upon graduation from high school, I joined the Army and was stationed in Germany, where my church life was very limited. I didn’t have a Christian role model to follow. However, Young Life had given me the basic foundation.

I moved to Sacramento, Calif., after I was discharged from the military and started attending college. I met my future husband, married, and we were both baptized at our church. Years later we went on our first adult mission trip and have never looked back. During the past six years my husband, my daughter and I have been on 10 short-term mission trips to nine different countries.

As a Christian, a mother, a wife, a registered nurse and a short-term missionary, I soon sensed the call to be a long-term missionary. My husband and I are currently on route to be missionaries to La Ceiba, Honduras. This is a far way from the life of a young girl, raised in a house of non-believers, who will now be a full-time missionary, hoping to be used by God to advance His kingdom. All of this is happening because of the Holy Spirit and the initial work done by this extraordinary organization, Young Life.