Since I can remember I've always been a cheerful person, loud and full of life. Early on in life, I started to have a passion for the sport of basketball, and with a lot of hard work and discipline, success was not far. I accomplished a lot of things through hard work and it was nice to see my hard work pay off. I earned a scholarship to an American university (UNLV). Then in America, away from my family, I realized I was lacking something. My family had always been in my life, and I always had a shoulder to cry on, an ear that listened, and people who were consulting me in times of difficulties. Being thousands of miles away from them, I realized that I was not really happy as there was something missing in my life. The more I dealt with it, the more I realized that it wasn't just my family that I was missing. It was something bigger than that. Something that would stay with me forever.

My second year in college I was attracted by some people on campus that were full of life, and their last names was not Fröhlich. So I started to wonder and I wanted to know what it was that made them appear so "fröhlich." They told me that they had prayed to receive Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Knowing they were Christians initially scared me, because to me that always had a "weird" connotation. However, because of their positive spirits, I continued to stick around, and I was exposed to stories about Jesus and what He's done in people's lives. I wasn't an easy "buyer".

After a long journey of fighting the facts of Christianity and wrestling with beliefs from my past, there was no way I could have resisted the love of God. So one day, I was at church, this feeling came over me, and I knew that I wanted to rely on God. I didn't want to fight things on my own anymore. That day I became a Christian--a person who believes that Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for their sins. 

Accepting Jesus as my Lord and Savior has taken the weight of life off of my shoulders and has allowed me to live life more freely and abundantly. Of course, there are still struggles and difficult times that I am facing—no one gets spared from that—but now I am not scared of things anymore, and I take every obstacle as a sign of God who wants me to grow.

I can truly smile through the day because Jesus is in control of my life now. Jesus in my life allows me to live freely and fully because He causes all things to happen for a reason. He has a plan and purpose for my life. So when people ask me, "Linda, why do you smile all the time?" I can tell them it is the joy of the Lord! I get to share with them my new life in Jesus!