As a young child in San José de Tarugua, Venezuela, Carmen was curious about what the priest was reading from during mass. She wanted to know more about God but didn’t have her own Bible until she was 18 and bought one from a Jehovah’s Witness friend.

But she was unsettled by what she was told and what she read. “They did not sit well in my heart,” Carmen says. She decided to look for and compare other versions of the Bible. “I was curious because there were many differences between what the Jehovah's Witnesses said and what I found in the Catholic Bible or the Evangelical Bible," she says.

In those moments of seeking the truth, Carmen went through a separation with her husband and started to feel an emptiness and sadness inside her.

Carmen was invited to a church that was being planted near her area. When she arrived, she wanted to share what was happening to her but fear prevented her from doing so. However, her situation worsened and the emptiness in her heart was getting bigger.

“I talked to someone at the church and he told me it was God who could help me. When I started to go to church, it removed much of the emptiness and I felt a lot of peace,” says Carmen.

For her, accepting Jesus into her life as her Savior and finding a place where she could receive encouragement has changed her life. Carmen has opened the doors of her home so more people can hear the gospel and have peace in the midst of circumstances like she experienced.