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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Adrian Zahid

Testimony of Adrian Zahid

Thank you all for coming, those of you who have had, took out the time to come.

And I'm really humbled by the fact that you guys have come because my life is interesting, but I know that you guys have lives too, you know.

And what I'd like to encourage you all that are here, that just as Doug said in his prayer, you know, personal testimony is very, very precious, you know.

And I hope that, you know, as I share my life with you, each 1 of you have the desire to share your life with those around you.

And as the Lord leads, if you feel like you would like to share, you know up front here That the Lord would give you the ability, you know and the and the desire, you know to share up front and There's there's nothing wrong about personal testimony It's it's something that has To me, it's very precious because for every story, for every person that is lost from the kingdom of heaven, is that 1 story that is lost forever.

It will never be told of what God could have done with that person's life.

Imagine a heaven without Paul or without Job or without Peter.

Our whole Christian life would be different.

Those people have affected our lives because they share their testimony.

And so each 1 of us has a testimony, and I'm going to share mine today.

My testimony is entitled, Chosen for a Purpose.

And I think it's appropriately titled because I was born in Sri Lanka, actually, and I was born to a Buddhist mother, but as the laws of Sri Lanka require, you have to show the ability to support your child or you cannot have your child.

And so my mother did not have enough money or whatever to support me and no documentation and so her child was taken away by the government, and that was me, taken away and placed up for adoption.

And When I was placed for adoption, there were 3 families that contested me There was a Muslim family from 1 of the Gulf states There was an atheist family from Sweden and there was a young couple from Pakistan the wife was Sri Lankan the father was Pakistani, husband was Pakistani, and they were Adventist.

And of the 3 groups, he was the poorest, you know?

And the judge is supposed to give the baby to the person who has the most resources, that's the law.

The most resources he's supposed to give the baby to that family.

And of all of them, my dad had the least resources because at the time he had just gotten out of college and he was working as a secretary typing papers you know for people and but somehow at the trial the judge in his opinion he said he said in my opinion you know his judicial opinion he said this family and he referred to this Adventist couple, will provide the most loving care possible for this child.

And So I became, I was adopted into an Adventist family.

And I like to tell this, you know, I could have been a Buddhist, I could have been maybe a terrorist, I could have been an atheist, but God chose me to be an Adventist.

And I tell you, a few weeks ago, a few months ago, we were at Hulda Crooks Park, and a bunch of us from Advent Hope were sitting on the ground, and we were talking, and somebody raised the question, you know, what would you be if you weren't an Adventist?

And somebody said I'd be an atheist, somebody said I'd be a Baptist, you know, and so on and so forth.

I said, and I truly believe this, I said, you know what, I can't imagine my life not being an Adventist, you know.

I'd rather be dead than not be, you know, I'd rather have never existed than not be an Adventist.

And it's because the love of Jesus that I have seen, you know, through reading Spirit of Prophecy, through reading Uncle Arthur's, you know, the Bible story, the ten-volume Bible story, the bedtime stories, you know, all those books, I learned to read on those books, you know, and Spirit of Prophecy, all these books have shown me, and the Bible of course, have shown me the love of Jesus that I cannot imagine living a life, you know, and wasting, you know, whatever, 60 years or 80 years and then finding Jesus, hearing maybe Pastor Mark Finley preach somewhere in Sweden or something like that, and then find Jesus.

My life as an Adventist has been the most blessed life.

My very first memory as a child was that of me being outside the chapel where we had services and they were singing a song and that song was a shelter in the time of storm I think you guys remember that song And I don't know why those words stuck in my mind But that was the very first song And the reason why I remember that And I was only 2 and a half at the time What we were doing, what the school was doing Was they had the hymnal and they were teaching the students all these hymns And so as they were going through, they would sing some of them you know, they would introduce them at church service and then during the week they would sing them, you know, and then they would move on so every church service it was a different set of hymns, you know, and so it took them about 2 years to finish the whole hymnal, the church hymnal, the older church hymnal, not this 1.

And by the time I was about 4 or 5, when they came back to that song, I said to my mom, I said, you know, that's my song.

And that song, just a shelter in the time of storm, has been in my mind since then.

My second memory was that of our neighbors, our next door neighbors, stealing bricks from us.

We had, my father's putting on a dish in our house and they had stacks of bricks all over the place and about as, almost as tall as me.

And these people, the boys, the young boys were taking the bricks and they were taking them over to their house and the mother was laying them down on the making of sidewalk, you know, as they were bringing them.

And it was the Sabbath, you know, can you imagine?

This is a Christian campus, an Adventist campus, so it is going on.

And I, as a little kid, 3 and a half years old, I had, somehow I had this sense of right and wrong right then, and I realized this was wrong what they were doing.

And so when they went away, I went to that place and 1 by 1 I started dragging the bricks back to my father's courtyard.

Unfortunately, it started to rain and I don't remember this part, but it started to rain and I fell down face first on the brick I was dragging.

I tore a gash in my forehead and my crying brought the neighbors and they took me to the dispensary because we didn't have a hospital, took me to the dispensary where Dr.

So I got the mark on my forehead if you want to call it, as a little kid.

But moving on with my story, when I was 6, you know, and I just told you, you know, I was just brought up in a very loving, very loving family.

When I was 6 years old, just 1 year before I started school, my mother believed that I should be 7 when I started school.

So when I was 6, I was roaming around the fields with a friend of mine, and my mother had this policy of whichever friend I wanted to play with, I had to bring them home first so that she could see me playing with them and within 1 hour, 1 play session, she would know whether I'd be associating with that kid or not.

And to this day, the friends I choose, I have that standard of, if I introduce this person to my mother, would she accept this person?

And it has helped me in my choosing of friends and it has helped the direction of my life because friends have a very big impact on your life.

But unfortunately, this friend of mine, We were roaming the fields and we came by Mrs.

So we came by her vegetable garden and my friend said, why don't you hold up your shirt and let's put some turnips in your shirt and we'll eat them, you know?

And of course we can't sit down and eat turnips right in front of Mrs.

Fried's field, so we were planning to take the turnips somewhere else.

So while we were, you know, putting all the turnips there, and we had quite a few, suddenly I heard this, you know, this sound that my mom makes.

I'm not going to make it now but I can hear it in my head, that I knew distinctly that my mom was calling me.

And so I knew it was lunchtime and so I ran, I said, well let's go home, why don't you take these home?

He said, no, you take them home and after lunch we'll eat them.

My mother was inside preparing food and I snuck in the house and I said, then I realized I have this stuff, these turnips, and there's no way I'm going to be able to show my mom the turnips that I stole them.

And so, but then I thought, you know, I can't put them in my bedroom.

At that time I didn't have the under the mattress or under the bed philosophy like kids developing after a while.

I said, then I waited and then my mom went to the bathroom or something and then I just ran into the kitchen and I unloaded the turnips into the vegetable pile and my parents they basically kept the vegetables in 1 pile on the floor, you know, there's a mat and then the fruit, you know, and they would just use it as needed.

She was heating up the food because we didn't have microwaves in those days.

As she returned and she continued cooking or heating up the food, my dad returned home and my mom told me to wash my hands, so I went and washed my hands and we came back to eat.

The conversation at the dinner table went like this.

My mother said, Joseph, why did you buy turnips?

At this time of the season, they're just coming into the season and you know they're so expensive, why don't you buy these turnips right now?" And my father replied back to her, her name is Audrey, my mom's name is Audrey, but he replied back to her as he calls her Odd, And so he said, odd, God in heaven knows that I have not bought any turnips.

And so then they realized something happened and my mother then ascertained the true origins of the turnips.

And lunch was forgotten and I found myself carrying a basket to Mrs.

Freed's house with my mom and walking up to Mrs.

Freed and saying something like this, Mrs.

Freed, you know as a little kid and I was holding the thing up, Mrs.

My mom says that she doesn't want her son to be left out of heaven because of turnips.

Where my parents instilled in me the desire to do what is right, the desire to be honest, the desire to serve the Lord.

My childhood was remarkably similar to those of you who have grown up in the Western hemisphere.

I had 1 of my friends, he had a go-kart, and so I learned to drive stick shift, you know, I had 5 gears and go-kart riding.

Then we had piano lessons, sports, you know, you name it, we had everything, you know.

I believe that there are only 2 people in this world, Muslims and Seventh-day Adventists.

Muslims smoked and Seventh-day Adventists did not smoke.

And it was just based on the fact that I never knew there were other Christians of other faiths or anything like that, or other religions even.

When I was 11, in the fifth grade, I had a friend who came from a missionary family that came from Australia.

They were really good friends of mine and their son was just a year younger than me and he had something called a computer.

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Testimony of Adrian Zahid

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