Donna Steele grew up with ten siblings at the end of the Great Depression. They were was not raised in church, and God was never mentioned in their home. “In fact, there wasn’t a Bible in the house!” she says.“But I always knew there was a God, because He came to me in dreams.” After visiting a mansion for the first time, she says her goal suddenly became to own one. “But that night, God came to me in a dream, turned over and sat down on an old bucket, and talked to me about life’s values. I was not to seek the things of this world, but to seek love to spread out to others,” she recalls. When Donna’s parents divorced, she began attending her grandmother’s Baptist church, and at the tender age of nine she answered an altar call and was baptized. After she married, she began attending her husband’s Pentecostal church. “The people were loud,” she says, “and I didn’t like it. But it was church, so I kept going.” Her journey took her through the Nazarenes, Catholicism, and even the Native American beliefs, but there was always something missing. “I look back now and I realize that although I had loved and known about God all my life, I’d never met Him,” she admits. Then, several years ago, Donna moved to southern Illinois to help her daughter Kristina, who works for 3ABN. “At that point, I wasn’t going to church, because I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere,” she says, “but Kristina kept mentioning her co-workers at 3ABN, so I began watching. I liked listening to Shelley Quinn, and soon I fell in love with the preaching of CA Murray, David Asscherick, and Kenneth Cox. Then one day, I met Danny Shelton and suddenly we were talking about the seventh-day Sabbath. I’d been taught that it was just for the Jews, but as I continued studying what Jesus said, everything lined up! Then I knew!”
She began attending the Thompsonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, and says, “Everything I heard was backed up directly in the Bible, and I’ve been there from that point on.
“It’s an amazing journey, and at 75 years of age, I finally have a freedom I’ve never had. No matter what happens, I just trust God!”