"I grew up in the home of Ernie and Laura Belle Christensen, Covenant Missionaries to Japan. At the age of 8--late one night while lying in a dormitory in Tokyo--I came to believe the simple message of John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." However, even though Jesus had given to me the gift of eternal life, I really didn't comprehend who He was. When I was 12, just days before our family was to return to Japan, my mother discovered a lump in her breast; she was diagnosed with breast cancer later that week and my parents decided not to return to Japan. My father received a call to a Covenant Church in Tacoma, Washington. Over the next three years I saw my mother's life eaten away by the cancer as doubt began to eat away at my own faith. In the vacuum left by her death I tried to find solace in the church and in reading the Bible but nothing seemed to help the overwhelming grief I felt.

After high school I was accepted to the University of Washington. I procrastinated in getting a place to live and so with little time left, I joined a fraternity. Immediately after moving into the fraternity, I was introduced to drinking and soon to drugs. I spent the next five years in binge drinking and heavy drug use while trying to attend the university. On September 16th, 1983--I will never forget that day--after an evening of binge drinking I suffered a severe head injury as a direct result of my drunkenness. I found myself the next day unable to speak with a large lump on the side of my head. My friends rushed me to the hospital. When the results of the CAT scan came in, Dr, Loeser, the head of the Department of Neurology at the University of Washington Hospital, came to give me the bad news. I had a large internal bruise--a subdural and epidural hematoma--in the speech center of my brain. Dr. Loeser said to me, "I don't know if you are going live, Grant, but if you do, you'll never speak again." I had 7 days in that hospital to think about my life. I had by my own hand--and choices--destroyed my life: I couldn't go back to school, nor to work. I couldn't pay my rent or utlities. I was facing large hospital bills. And I couldn't speak. Once again lying in a bed late at night, I heard the still, small voice of Jesus calling to me, "Come home." Jesus healed me, giving me back my speech. The doctor told me I was a very lucky man; no, I am a very blessed man.

Since then God has called me to open the gospel of His grace to anyone who will listen. "Grace" isn't just a word or theology for me; the grace of Jesus is why I'm alive; the kind action of Jesus to change a broken life is the very ground I stand on. When growing up, the message I heard conveyed by the church was, "Change yourself enough and Jesus will accept you." Rather, in that place of complete brokenness, Jesus found me and said, "Come to me--just as you are--and I will change you." Jesus gave me a promise found in Philippians 1:6, "Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." And to this day I am only confident in His work in my life. I have now come to understand that I know but a thimbleful of the inexhaustible love and grace of Jesus. My life's verse is Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Any real living that I'm able to do is only by the one who has come to live within. In the end--after all is said and done--Jesus is enough, His love boundless and His grace sufficient!"

I was born and raised in a medium sized farming community in Nebraska. While in my younger days my family was not what you would call religious. They taught us the rights and wrongs of the world but never put them in terms of religion. While in high school I would attend church with friends of several different denominations but never any one in particular. At the age of 17 I enlisted in the Navy to get "off the farm" to "see the world".

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