I want to share my testimony because a lot of people don’t know who missionaries are, and they think we are people born special and put in a special incubator and brought up in a spiritual way to serve the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are very real people.

My beginnings were in an alcoholic home. My father used to beat my brothers and sisters,throwing them down the steps at night and crashing their heads against the doorframes. My little brother, as young as four years old, were thrown inside of the car motor and they would have to take the motor apart or be beaten. Often, my little brothers of four years old would fall asleep in that motor. No one would know where he was, and we would find him sleeping across the motor.

My mother was sleeping with a loaded gun pointed towards her head for a long time and often I would creep down the stairs at night to put my hand over her mouth to see if she was still breathing. My father would just drink, and drink, and drink. Although he had a job at General Motors, that money was never for the family’s use, it was for his own pleasure.

We were very poor. In my junior year of school, I had two blouses and one skirt. I was never allowed to sit down in the classroom. Although I had been a straight-A student up until the last few years when I finally flunked out (I do not have a high school diploma) things just didn’t work out that way because things were just a survival test towards the last. There were just so many things in our family. Even when I went to school they thought I was a hood because I just clammed up. I had become so intimidated by the things of life and feeling like I wasn’t worth anything. Just not knowing anything else but the love of God, I mean I was raised, ever since I was a year old, I did know the Lord, I did know God was my father so I always looked in pity on other people in compassion and tried to help. But sometime along the way it just seems like you begin to struggle so hard, that it’s hard to wake up every morning, and that’s the way it was becoming as a teenager. Never having enough food, never being accepted anywhere, and frankly never getting out of the countryside. We rarely went to town. I didn’t know what it was like. I am not comfortable going into stores yet today because we were just never taken as children.

My father used to try to drive us into flooded waters to drown us. So there began to be a spirit of fear. When I was twelve, the Lord did save me. I was invited to church one time by an aunt. At that time the Lord called my name three times, like little Samuel, out loud my name came. I went to the altar and gave my heart to the Lord, not knowing what sin was exactly. I just know that a big burden rolled off my back.

Those years in high school, and by the way I only got to go maybe one or two days a year, it was very hard. The teachers wouldn’t give me schoolbooks because I lived on the borderline of the school. They said I should share a book with somebody in town. It just became so discouraging because I knew at the age of twelve God had called me to be a missionary, but it just looked like I wasn’t ever going to get there. But you know there was a responsibility to my family, and I would never change the things that I did. I was responsible to help my mother with my baby brothers and sisters. My last little brother was born when I was sixteen years old. I had to take him to school with me when I did go, and the kids often persecuted me and said he was my baby and treated me really bad, like they often do. There were just so many things against my life. I wanted a different home. I didn’t want an alcoholic home. I wanted a Christian home.

So I started going to church and I married a deacon, only to find out that he was a wife basher. I died giving birth to my third child because of lack of medical attention. My husband so beat me down mentally, and told me that I was no good, although I was a mother who knew how to bake and take care of a big family and could clean better than anybody. Not to boast, but it is a gift God has given me. I enjoy homemaking. Although I was trying to be the best godly woman I knew how to be, I was being told I was no good and being beaten all the time. He was a football player, weightlifter, and a boxer, and that was how he handled his aggression with me. In the hospital, he denied me medical help for like eight hours. My soul, you know, I just got weaker and weaker. I died with the 23^rd Psalm on my lips, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me.” As I passed from this life to the next, I met Jesus and we conversed for a while. I saw my baby being born on the earth, and I declared, I said, “Lord, not even a baby boy would take me back.” I wanted eleven children by the way. I love kids. The Lord spoke to me and he said, “But Karen, I have a great work for you to do on the earth.” He didn’t promise me that he was going to change my situation. He just told me his grace would be sufficient. And you know, for the love of Jesus Christ, I returned to that same situation.

My son was born mentally handicapped because he was without air in my stomach for that long. For nine years that little boy went to school, and he would come home everyday and he would just smash himself in the face and say, “I hate myself, I hate myself. Mother, the kids tell me I’m stupid. I’m ignorant. They tell me I’m a dummy. They call me retarded. Mother I want to be a doctor. The teachers tell me I’ll only carry the trash out.” I want you to know I put the word of God within him, we had a little chalk board in my kitchen, and every day my one-, two-, three-year-olds, as soon as they began to speak, we began to memorize scriptures. I told my son, “I don’t know how God is going to do it, but if God has put the desire within your heart, he’s going to do it.”

When he was nine years old, the Lord woke me up at four o’clock in the morning, and told me to go to school and get that boy out of that class, because he was going to heal him. They graded his I.Q. that day and he was kaput. He didn’t have any I.Q. I didn’t let that stop me. I didn’t let the fact that the schoolteachers decided that I was a crazy Christian and that I should have my children taken away from me and put in a mental institution.

I had already been through the losing of your mind and the propaganda. I knew what Jesus Christ said and I knew who he was. I tell you, I lost my mind for over a year by the battering. My husband just so fed me full of garbage about myself that I just got hopeless and lost everything. For a year, I squatted down behind the furniture if somebody started to come up my walk. I could not go into the little town and buy my own groceries. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even get the mail off the front porch without crouching down like some deranged person and grabbing the mail. But I tell you, one day Jesus came into my life in a special way. He had been there before, but in a special grace he came and he chased those demons away from me that were trying to keep me prisoner. I came out stronger, and that day in the school, even though they were saying those things, I didn’t listen to what they had to say. I had heard my God, and my God is a big God. Three days later they tested my son, his I.Q. had jumped way up. I want you to know that my son is a nurse today.

I am a mother of four grown children and have two grandsons. God has done marvelous things in our family. I was in an explosion of acids. I went blind, my face was scarred. The hair was all burned off and by the end of the day, in one day, giving praise, I didn’t cry like some people, I just said, “God, you’re still here. What do you want me to do?” I began to praise him. My eyesight came back, my face was healed within a day and my hair was growing back across my forehead and across my eyelids.

I’ve been through surgeries. I’ve been paralyzed for one year. My husband beat me so hard that I had become paralyzed for one year. It was the most excruciating pain that I was ever in. You see today that I dance, I walk, I sing, and jump up and down in joy for the Lord. I know who has given me back my legs. I have a right to jump and dance and use my body for the Lord God. It’s his temple. The doctors told me I would wind up snarled and gnarled in a wheel chair, crippled beyond recognition. I tell you, God is a big God. I know my personality could have wound up snarled and gnarled too, and that I could be an ugly old person today in my heart because I’ve seen something across America - that abuse is rampant. There is an enemy out against womanhood and femininity. I’m not talking about women libbers. Those are battered women, abused women and girls that have grown up and turned away from men. I tell you, we need a revival within the men’s hearts of America to begin to treat the women the way God wants them. To protect that woman, because they’re fragile creatures, and when you hurt that fragile woman too much, she can become the hardest. There is nobody harder than a hard woman. There is no man worse than that. When women get bad, they’re really bad. It's true. I say that with so much love for them because I work in a maximum-security prison, and my prisoners are women who have been abused since they were little. They are murderers. And sometimes it takes great anointing to break that yoke over their lives, but God is doing it. It’s wonderful to be able to tell a woman that has murdered somebody, “God has forgiven you, honey, God has forgiven you,” and see that release of tears and see that tenderness come back. 80% of the prostitutes have been molested since they were babies. Its hard for those girls to have good relationships and grow up pure and true when they have been violated all of their lives. When you see a prostitute, in the name of Jesus, tell her about the Lord that can give her back her virtue, and God can make her new. When you see hardened women, you go to them and tell them. When you see lesbians, you need to tell them that Jesus loves them, he doesn’t love their sin, but they’re hiding behind that sin because of the wounds and you must break through and bring those people to liberty. They are prisoners, and we must bring them out in the name of Jesus.

I know one day I prayed. I said, “God I don’t want to feel anymore. I’ve loved my husband and loved my husband. I don’t want to feel anymore.” I knew that was wrong, and I said, “God, I’m sorry. Make a woman of me.” And it is the femininity of Jesus Christ then has been born in my life. I am who I am today, a very strong woman, I’m not someone who bows down, but I’m also very, very happy that we have men we can look up to, and have protection from them. I often think, I’m not standing in this ministry call because I am supposed to be here. I believe some men forfeited the job that I have, and because I was a willing soldier, I got put into the place.

I want to encourage the men, please get up and lead. America is rolling and reeling from lack of male leadership. If the men will get up and begin to lead and protect their homes, and begin to do what God has asked them to do, you’ll save a lot of teenagers, you’ll save a lot of kids, because kids need a role model. So often they don’t have one, where divorce is so rampant, and it is taking Romania down too. I encourage you; find out what your call is, and stand tall. Your first calling is as a father. Your first calling is leader over your home. Take that leadership seriously and begin to lead. God will bring justice into the area where you’re at, and God will begin to turn things around.

I am still hunted by my husband. He still seeks me out to kill me. He has bought a tombstone and he has put his name and my name on it and he has put it into my family’s graveyard. He has bought a plot right beside my parents’ plot. He often speaks to people about that is where he is going to bury me. He has been as far as Romania. He has been to China. He keeps threatening coming over the borders. He has told me a couple times he was coming. But I want you to know; I am no longer ruled or afraid of those manipulating and controlling spirits. I have been through a lot, but Jesus Christ has shown me he is greater than anything. I want you to know that God sees, and he will have justice. I pray for my husband. We’ve been divorced ten years, but I still pray that God will break that man free, because he lives in hell and torment every day. He has forfeited his family, he has forfeited his wife, and he has forfeited his walk with the Lord. And I pray, in the name of Jesus, that he too will be released. But I am no longer controlled by the manipulating and controlling spirit, and the fear. But I also praise God for having lived through all those hard times. You know why? Because I never would have been able to live in Romania, where it is a communist country, ruled by manipulation, control, and fear.

I consider my life on earth a boot camp. I want to tell you that many people are still licking their wounds from boot camp. You’ve been through life, and it’s been tough. It’s been boot camp. Every soldier whines. The food’s not good, the hours are wicked. You get out of bed and you’re called to discipline. When you’re tired and worn out they make you march some more, and if you whine anymore they throw more on your back and tell you to march even farther. I tell you what; God knows what kind of battle we’re coming into. We’re coming into the beginning of sorrows, and God has been allowing us in these things, he’s been with us in these things. If you haven’t found him in your situation, you better find him, because He’s there. He will give you the grace to live through those things. Out of that grace, he will give you anointing that will break the yoke for someone else. You don’t become a colonel without being a private first, you don’t become a private without going through boot camp, and if you are not going through boot camp right, you’re going to be court-martialled. Many people are prisoners of war today because they didn’t learn how to fight. I want to encourage you to get the word of God within your heart, because you don’t know what day it will be that someone will come here in America and confiscate the word of God. And if you can’t hear the commander-in-chief in the quiet times, and you don’t know his commands in the day of rest and peace in boot camp, you’re never going to hear him in the din of war. Do you hear me? If you don’t know Jesus’ voice today, and can’t follow him, and you don’t know how to walk in his grace and be hidden in his feathers... I just love him. He is the best. He describes himself in the Psalms as the hen that sits down over the chickens. And I tell you, I’d rather wake up every morning with feathers in my mouth then to get up grumbling and complaining. I walk under that shadow every day. I know that nothing can touch me. He will fight for me. There will be a day I will lay my life down for him, but I will know that time, and there will be grace, and I consider it an honor to give my life for the greatest king that ever walked. I want to follow the commander, and I want to be the best soldier. I’ve lived fifty years, and I think of how God has kept his hand on my life in many shaky times, times I thought I was losing it, times I was troubled, times I would have liked to have just given up and gone on. But God has kept me fifty years. My prayer is that if I live another fifty years, and should the Lord tarry, I hope and pray that I will still be the soldier, and still be climbing higher in his grace.

I encourage you folks, in that walk too, that you would begin to let the Lord Jesus Christ heal your wounds. Quit licking them. I tell you, it's time that we give up the little things. We are commanded to follow him, we are his bondservants, and when he seals us, he is responsible for our food, he is responsible for our clothes, he is responsible for everything in our lives. He will always give us the direction that we need and the power that we need to overcome. And that is what God is wanting to do in our lives today. He is wanting to build us up and strengthen us and let us know whom we really serve, so that we are fearless, not even fearing for our lives. That is the kind of soldier I want to be.

As a bible smuggler, I’m telling you, there have been guns in my face at the border. And I’ll tell you the greatest peace, the soldiers didn’t know what to do with me, because they were waving machine guns, and I even slapped a soldier for taking something back out of my suitcase. It's marvelous knowing, and I speak with the government of Romania now. A religious factor in Romania tried to kill me three times. They tried to put me in prison as a spy, forever. I fought in the courts of Romania for a year, but what a joy to know that the Lord God has every day a path made for me and no man, no man, no man can stand against what God has planned for my life. I do believe that I can stand. And I’m not saying that because of Karen Rose, but because of the power of God, that I’ve seen him in my life. I’ve seen him; he’s able to keep that which we have committed to him against that day. And he will be able to perform those things that he’s promised, those visions that he’s given. And I will be able to do those things in his name because of his power and his love, and by his grace. We must remember the grace of Jesus Christ. It is not by works we’re saved, but it’s by grace. It’s not by works we’re healed; it’s by the grace of God. It’s not by how good we were that we were saved, it’s by God’s grace, by his mercy. His mercies are new every morning. And I invite you now, to take the mercies of God seriously again, and get in there, and say, “Lord, my life has been nothing compared to yours.” Because he was the first bondservant. He laid himself down and died in our place, taking our sin upon him.

I was translated one time. I spent, as an intercessor, many, many hours in prayer. There was a time and a period that I went every night and spent the whole night in the church, laying before the Lord, praying before the Lord, and God showed me something very important in this translation. I was translated from the prayer room one night and dropped into Africa, in front of a Bedouin, an African person who had leprosy. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. I just knew the pain. I stood very close, and Jesus stood behind me. And I looked up in the face of that person, and that person was so hardhearted. He said, “Go ahead, spit on me. Throw your rocks. Tell me I’m unclean. Just try to hurt me. You can’t.” He groaned so hard. The love of God compelled me to put my arms about him. I just wanted to put my arms around him. And I didn’t care that he had leprosy. The devil was there too, and he said, “Put your arms around him and you’re going to get leprosy.” I said, “I don’t care. I don’t care. I have to touch. I have to put this person in my arms.” As I put that person in my arms and pulled him to me, I knew the exchange of the cross, of what Jesus did for every one of us. All the pain, and the turmoil, and the disease went into my body. Hit me in the heart so hard, I thought I was going to die. And the love of Jesus went out and filled that person’s heart. There was an exchange. All that wounding, all that pain, all that disease, went over on the cross that day. And all the love of Jesus came into our lives. As I stepped back, I said, “Lord, what can we do?” And the Lord just smiled, and he put his hand over my shoulder to touch the head of that person. And from the tip of the head to the souls of the feet, he became new. The nose re-formed. The ears formed back. Little downy fuzz began to grow across the eyebrows and across the tip of the head. That person was saved that day because of the love of Jesus Christ.

God’s a transforming God. He is a renewing God. He says to us to speak to those dry bones and command the flesh to come back, and life to come back. And that’s what we should be speaking over our churches, and speaking over our family members that have fallen away. There are many lambs that have been lost, and he said, “I left the 99, and I have sought that little lost lamb.” But you know, I see something in America; so many people come and go that there are very few who even know when a little lamb gets lost. And you know, if the little lamb wanders away, it’s a prime target for the enemy. I’ve seen in Romania where we’ve had 500 sheep encased in a little simple fence, and one little lamb I saw one day lying right outside the fence. Right there, was all torn to bits by a big bear. And you know, had the little lamb stayed within the fold, it would have been safe. But because he wandered out, just a little farther away, the enemy got him. Some lambs in the fold of God have wandered away and gotten lost and gotten wounded, and God’s going to send many of you out there to seek that little lost lamb. Bring them back; bring them back in the name of Jesus. God wants to restore them back to the body.

He showed me something about this ring that someone gave me many years ago. I dreamed it was all ripped up and diamonds were missing and the gold was twisted and everything. It's not because of the value of this ring, but it's because of why God gave it to me and what he’s doing with this ring; that night in that dream I saw myself get up and start to hunt for the tiny little diamonds and crying, and crying, and searching for those diamonds. Someone walked up and said, “Karen, don’t cry. We’ll take it to the jeweler. We’ll get new diamonds. We’ll get gold, and fill it in and fix it up again.” And you know, my reply was, “I don’t want new diamonds. I want the old ones. They're precious.” When I woke up that morning, the Lord said, “Karen, I could bring lots of new people in.” He said, “I could do lots of new things, and I could bring all new people in.” But he said, “Karen, I want my old jewels. I want my old jewels. Karen, go get them, bring them in. Those are what are precious in my crown. I want the old jewels.” The old jewels are those little lost lambs. Church, in the name of Jesus, what God tells you to do, go do it. His anointing will be upon you.