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“Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.  And I will make you into a great nation.  I will bless you and make your name great and you will be a blessing.”  Genesis 12:1-2

Greetings.  My name is Grace Martin.  I was born August 1, 1958 in Wheeling, West Virginia because that was where the hospital was located for my small country town on the Ohio River of Martins Ferry, Ohio.  I am the oldest of four children with one brother and two sisters.  I went to The Ohio State University.  I was a typical child of the 70’s enjoying a somewhat hippie lifestyle.  I am very active and love excitement.  I began Bible study in the fall of 1978 with Missionary Sarah and Peter Chang who had just come to OSU to pioneer from Chicago.  I had spent the previous school year trying to escape my partying lifestyle by going from church to church and to various student Christian organizations where I was offered mostly ritual and fellowship and did not find anything that satisfied my soul mostly because I was so sin sick.  I was fished while sitting under a tree on OSU campus.  I was resting after studying all night and taking an exam and was listening to a woman singing beautifully.  Suddenly she disturbed my rest and asked me if I was a Christian.  I said that I was a struggling Christian.  She had no idea what that meant but asked me to study the Bible with her. I was reluctant because of my previous experience with Christian groups but she was persistent and took my phone number and gave me hers.  We studied John’s gospel the following week and I experienced the beauty of God’s word and God’s deep calling.  I cried a lot during my first Bible studies and prayer meetings.  Because of my mother’s discipline to attend the Catholic church as a child I had a sense of guilt about my sinful life of pleasure-seeking and rebellion.  Missionary Peter and Sarah were very happy about my response to God’s word and I was sent to Chicago to visit Mother Barry and Dr. Samuel Lee a couple times.  The first time was Thanksgiving.  I remember that meal like it was yesterday.  The next time I came to Chicago was together with Christy Toh who had come to Bible study about 6 months earlier in Toledo.  We stayed with Dr. Samuel Lee and again I remember that time like it was yesterday.  I loved all of my spiritual elders and the missionaries and sheep and they loved me.  My church was like heaven and I was so grateful to be a part of this ministry and felt closeness to Dr. Samuel Lee and Mother Barry.  I received persecution from my family because I stopped partying and moved out from my sisters and childhood friend’s apartment at college and into our center.  I remember when I asked God if this was what he wanted me to do and that is when I experienced God’s calling like an iron rod coming out of heaven into my heart.  Our ministry at OSU flourished.  One of my highlights was when I went to Korea in 1980 as part of the American journey team to share our life testimonies.  That is when I met Maria Ahn.  She was pregnant with her daughter Maria.  She was Christy Toh’s and my traveling companion and we shared rooms wherever we went.  DK was also on the mission trip.  It was a very intense journey because Korea was under martial law and had just had a crackdown on student protests resulting in student deaths at Kwang Ju. The environment of the country was somber, but our mission trip was full of the Holy Spirit and light.  The key verse Dr. Samuel chose was Mark 13:10:  “And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.”  It was the most beautiful two weeks of my life and I remember it like it was yesterday.  Dr. Samuel H. Lee, the former UBF director of Korea, was my translator and I sang a hymn in Korean before my life testimony.  I met so many precious servants of God.  At a leader’s retreat, Missionary Maria Ahn invited so many of her sheep that there were about 15 of us women sleeping in a very very small room.  Two women even slept on the shelf!  I remember sleeping with my face against the back of someone’s head.  I am so thankful for Missionary Maria Ahn’s prayers for me on that trip.  It was when I really began to repent for my sins deeply.  After this trip God trained me through Missionary Peter Chang to grow as a shepherdess and spiritual leader.  I was only in Columbus UBF three years, but when I went out 15 years later to pioneer our own chapter in NC, all the lessons I learned there came back to me.  I married in the fall of 1982 to the ancestor of faith of Cincinnati ministry. Cincinnati was only two hours drive from Columbus, and my Bible teachers and my husband’s Bible teachers were friends so when he came to his first Bible study we went to meet him.  During 15 years in Cincinnati in Missionary Hannah and Sam Zun’s ministry we raised 4 children.  I worked at the University of Cincinnati and sponsored our student organization.  We served many students and co-workers at our work places with Bible study and had good fruit there. David Miller was my husband’s Bible student.  Sh. John was having job problems and at that time Dr. Samuel Lee’s son moved to Cincinnati, so Dr. Samuel Lee found out about it.  He invited us to Chicago and encouraged us to look outside of Cincinnati for work.  I send Sh. John’s resume all over the US, from east to west and north to south.  He had 7 interviews in Raleigh, NC and God showed us clearly that was where he wanted us to move.  I moved four children, and four cats to NC.  My youngest was age 5 and my oldest, John Jr., was age 12.  The children participated whole-heartedly in our ministry and we enjoyed 15 years of house church ministry at NC State University.  Now, after 15 years of ministry, God called us to go as missionaries to Scotland.  We left our ancestor of faith, Sh. Andrew Dellinger and his wife Heather Dellinger as directors.  God has blessed them and we pray for their ministry at NC State University and for our other co-workers in the Southeast US with whom we gather for conferences—Esther and Wesley Yoon in Atlanta, Grace and Jeff Cummings in Tampa and other co-workers in Tennessee and now in Charleston, SC, Mark Yang Jr.  We pray for God’s work in the Southeast to raise 12 disciples of Jesus and 120 of the flock of God.  We are the first of 12 missionaries we pray for them to send to other countries.

Last summer we went to Europe to spy out the land.  My husband is English and Polish.  His oldest brother was born in London.  We drove 4 thousand miles around Europe in 3 weeks.  We asked God for a sign, and after the trip we realized we really loved the Scottish people.  When we began to look for jobs there Sh. John realized that he needed one more year of graduate school to be able to teach architecture in Great Britain.  He began studying graduate school and teaching classical architecture at Judson University in Elgin, IL.  We live across the street from our Chicago church in the Pyung Yang house.  I am so happy to be in Chicago surrounded by my spiritual elders who loved me so much and shepherded me my entire Christian life.  I pray to serve the main center, and Mother Barry and to help make year-long missionary training material while I am here.  God has blessed my Christian life abundantly to make me into a great nation.  While in Columbus, UBF God helped me to fish Pastor Teddy Hembekedes and Deborah Ward.  While in Cincinnati Sh. Nathan Walker and in Raleigh to raise a director’s family.  I pray we may become more and more useful to God in his redemptive history.  May God make American and Europe and kingdom of priests and a holy nation.