Sound of Freedom

*pseudonym

“My dad was one of 50 children,” Colleen* ’17 says. “I am one of 12 children—eight full siblings and four half-siblings.”

In Colleen’s community in northern Mexico, large families were the norm. “It was a fundamentalist Mormon community,” Colleen says, “meaning that they believed in polygamy.”

Though she grew up in Mexico, Colleen was born in the United States. “We traveled back and forth [between Mexico and the US] because my dad worked in construction and other types of jobs in the US,” she says.

As a child, Colleen was a devout follower of her faith. “I loved going to the Mormon church,” she says. “I prayed three times a day, and I was baptized when I was eight years old. I went to public school, and I defended my belief system wholeheartedly to my friends.”

Like other girls raised in fundamentalist Mormonism, Colleen had a clear-cut goal for her future from an early age.

“My whole life I believed that if I could just follow the Ten Commandments and fulfill the law of polygamy, I could make it to the celestial kingdom,” she says. “So my goal became to be a polygamist wife, a stay-at-home mom, to raise my own children and do all the things that seemed to be holy so that I could earn my salvation.”

An abusive upbringing

When Colleen entered her teen years, she experienced the emotional challenges that many teenagers do—rebelliousness, defensiveness, and doubt. But her emotions were intensified by the trauma of abuse, both inside her home and from others in the community.

She says, “My dad was very abusive, emotionally and physically. When I was 15, I decided to leave my home.” She moved in with her aunt and uncle, who were attending a Christian church.

Although Colleen says she wasn’t looking for another religion and was more interested in “new age stuff,” she went to Sunday services with her aunt and uncle. There she heard the pastor talk about things she had never heard before.

The difference Jesus makes

As she sat under the teaching of God’s Word and encountered the good news of Jesus Christ for the first time, Colleen remembers being surprised with a lot of questions, thinking, You mean I’m actually a sinner and there’s not one thing I could ever do to earn my salvation? Salvation is a free gift? What? I don’t have to be a polygamist? I don’t have to be married? I don’t have to follow rules? It has all been done when Jesus died on the cross?

After a year and a half of hearing the story of Christ’s sacrifice, provision, and love, Colleen says, “It finally just clicked. I wanted to put my faith in Jesus—Someone I didn’t have to prove myself worthy to. I prayed with my pastor, and my walk of faith in the Lord Jesus kind of launched from that point.”

Eventually, Colleen had the opportunity to move to Chicago. There she had the freedom to pursue her new relationship with Christ. She heard about the Moody Church and began attending.

“There was a college pastor at the Moody Church who became one of the most influential people in my life,” Colleen says. “I was discipled and mentored, and a year and a half later, I was baptized.”

It was at church that Colleen first learned about something else that would become influential in her life: Moody Bible Institute. “I met people at the Moody Church who went to Moody Bible Institute,” she says. “That’s how I learned that MBI had a degree in counseling. I thought—I would love to go to a school where I can learn about counseling but also learn more about the Bible!”

Pain and grace at Moody

In 2014, Colleen enrolled at Moody and quickly found a love for both her courses and her professors. Dr. Mike Milco was one of her main professors and her academic adviser for the Pre-Counseling (now Human Services) program. “He really embodied the gospel,” she says.

“I had Dr. Sanjay Merchant for apologetics and philosophy studies, and I experienced a lot of grace and patience from him as I learned and completed assignments,” Colleen says. Dr. Merchant, in turn, remembers Colleen as “an exemplary student, respected by her peers and mild mannered.”

Colleen “clearly had experienced pain in her [childhood] community,” Dr. Merchant says, “but she also demonstrated a thoughtful maturity about her upbringing. I was in awe of what God had done in her life to deliver her from that cult to life in Christ.”

In a class called “The Theology of Suffering,” Colleen began exploring that pain, something most people want to avoid completely.

“Through my own suffering and through the pain that I’ve experienced, I’ve been able to connect with the suffering Jesus in a way that I don’t think I would have ever been able to,” she says. “Because of suffering, we get to experience greater intimacy with this God who is so utterly worthy and safe and loving.”

Colleen graduated from Moody in 2017 with her bachelor’s degree in Human Services. After graduation, she began working for a nonprofit organization that serves women in Chicago who are survivors of sex trafficking.

Helping trafficked women

Recently, Colleen has moved into full-time mission work and will be taking the skills she’s learned and the love she has for Spanish-speaking people to Central America.

“She has an experience, a testimony, and a Christlike maturity to be a useful tool in the Spirit’s hand,” Dr. Merchant says. “He will accomplish His purposes though a ready servant like Colleen.”

Colleen is grateful to serve. “My hope and desire is to care for the physical and spiritual needs of the victims of sex trafficking there,” she says. “I’m passionate about working with this population of women because I believe that the industry of sex trafficking is one of the most demonic things. The Enemy has taken something beautiful and sacred and has distorted it. My heart is to bring the gospel and equip the church for people to understand what God has to say about these things.”

Along with the physical and emotional healing that these women will need, Colleen wants to bring them a message to restore their soul.

“I can help to meet their physical needs,” she says, “but if I have not met their spiritual needs with the hope of the gospel and the life that is found in Jesus, then I have done nothing. Moody really taught me the value of that.

“I want those caught in the sex trade to know that in Jesus they can find hope. In Jesus they can find life, the life that their hearts long for, a life of love and freedom and joy and peace and all the things that we have access to because of the cross.”

Thanking God for the pain

Colleen may have moved from the Moody classroom to the classroom of real life, but she’s never stopped learning about and marveling at the love of Jesus. “Over a year ago, I was thanking the Lord for all the pain that I’ve experienced. That was the first time in my Christian walk that I was able to actually thank Him for the pain.

“I see the heart of the triune God for people who are broken, who are in bondage, and who are suffering in this world. The Father is seeking them. He is crying out to them. The Holy Spirit is interceding on their behalf, and Jesus Himself says to them, ‘You are so worth it that I am willing to suffer and die for you, for your freedom, for your hope, and for your abundant life.’”