Just Jerri: God’s unexpected plan for my first book

Each day, as I get closer and closer to my homegoing, I’m truly in awe of how God has orchestrated my life. In spite of my mistakes and failures, He always seems to turn them around to complete His sovereign purposes.

Some of you may know that I have written a few books, the first of which was my book entitled, Gone Fishin’.

The contents of the book are about various incidences of my fishing for souls. Early on in my Christian life, I began to memorize Bible verses, and two verses have always stood out to me: Mark 1:17 and Proverbs 11:30.

In Mark’s account of the life of Jesus he records Jesus as saying, “Follow me and I will make you to become fishers of men.” (KJV)

In the Proverbs verse it says, “…he that winneth souls is wise.” (KJV)

Naturally, I wanted to follow Jesus after I gave my heart to Him, and who doesn’t want to be wise?

My first catch was a young Jewish woman, by the name of Frances Abraham! Wow! There you go. “…to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16 KJV)

Well, here I am, 67 years into this amazing adventure called Christianity, and God still keeps surprising me.

Allow me to backtrack and tell you about an incident in 1992 when my mother passed into Heaven. My mom hardly had anything in the way of material goods, but the few things she did possess, my brothers and I donated to the Russian church in Sacramento.

In 1992 there were approximately twenty thousand Russians living in Sacramento. Today there are around two hundred thousand residing there.

As a result of this donation my brother Doug got involved in reaching Russians for Jesus in an outreach ministry called, Word To Russia — lots of stories there, as you can well imagine!

In the last year or so, after Russia invaded Ukraine, the Word To Russia ministry was trying to help a young Russian man and his family to come to America. Mission accomplished, and now Sergei Kuznetsov, a Russian immigrant who taught English in Russia, is living near my brother in Northern California.

When my brother approached him about translating my book into Russian, Sergei jumped at the opportunity, declaring, “I’ll do anything for you to show my deepest appreciation for all your help, Doug.”

Along with Sergei doing this translation work, the Lord brought a young couple into my life that are fluent in Spanish and — you guessed it — Ricardo and Hannah Avalos are working on translating Gone Fishin’ in Spanish.

We sure can’t outguess God. If you think God doesn’t have a plan for your life, my friend, you’re wrong. He does have a plan, and He wants to bless you in ways beyond your comprehension. Just give your past, present and future to Him and you will see amazing and astounding things. Take it from an old lady, GOD HAS A BIGGER PLAN!