By: Lieutenant Ruth Cancia

Few people have the opportunity to walk through life with the assurance that each step was breathed by God himself.

I was born into a middle class family, and for as long as I can remember, I was always at church. My parents are ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As a child, I helped in my parents' ministry. At a very young age I learned that helping people was what God wanted me to do.

As a teenager I was shy, quiet and awkward. I was relentlessly picked on, pushed around and ostracized because of the way I looked and spoke. I would cry myself to sleep nightly. My spirit was crushed, and I had no self-esteem. I felt unable to confide in my parents because my mom is a very proactive lady and would have gone to the school about any of her children, which would have made matters worse for me. I stayed close to God. On one of the many nights that I was sick with anxiety, I heard God talking to me.

In my early teenage years, I felt that God was telling me about his plans for my life. I knew then that I was to be an advocate for the voiceless, the invisible and the ones that people overlooked. I thought that I was going to become a teacher and eventually a principal. But it has been said that, "Often times, God hears our plans and he laughs."

Before the beginning of time, God knew who we were and he began weaving each individual's story. He intricately placed events, people and circumstances in the story to build faith, character and love. I was dealt my fair share of heartache and pain, but the Lord sustained me. He sparked a passion in me that I would have used to glorify him anyway, but he had other plans.

In 2006, God brought light to the passion that I had been pursuing. Yes, I was to be an advocate for the voiceless, the invisible and the ones people overlooked, but it would not be as a teacher or principal. God was calling me into full time ministry. At a fall youth event, I heard God clarifying the message that he had given me 10 years earlier. During an altar call to make a decision, a wall of young people stood and moved forward in response to the challenge and kneeled before the Lord. An instant later, a sea of officers stood simultaneously and moved forward to cover the youth in prayer. In that moment I heard the Lord say, "This is what you were created for."

God calls, we answer. Everything that a person goes through in life is part of the process by which Almighty God molds and makes an individual. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart (Jeremiah 1:5).

God knew me before I ever came into being.

He loved me, taught me and showed me who I was. I am Ruth Cancia, an ordinary girl, with an extraordinary calling. He walked with me every step of the way as he whispered my plan into motion.