Where to begin? Wow! Let's go back to my mother's womb (a few years ago). There were two of us in there. Like Jacob and Esau, when we left the birth canal, it was plain to see that these twins were quite different. My brother James entered the world first. He was a light complexion baby. Twenty-two minutes later yours truly came along. I exited with dark skin, and according to my grandmother, Mary Virginia (or "Mama" as we called her) the delivering doctor handled this chocolate infant differently than he did my brother.

James was held in the "normal" way, but I was held by my feet upside down as he proceeded to spank me. Mama told him a thing or two, and "got him straight." From that day forward, this five-foot-two-inch little woman took it upon herself to be my protector. She even gave me my name, Jerome (holy one) Leon (lionhearted).

As the years passed, Mama was not only a witness, but a participant of God's amazing grace in my life. As a lad of five years of age, one evening I did some sleepwalking (it had never happened before or since). I ended up standing beneath a cross on the wall in my bedroom. The next morning my grandmother told me what happened, and said that God was calling me to be a minister. My family was raised in another faith, and it was not my goal in life to be a preacher.

When I reached the age of 15, God's grace led Mama to listen to a radio broadcast called "The Voice of Prophecy." The speaker, H.M.S. Richards Sr., offered a series of free Bible studies for young people. Mama sent for the lessons, enrolling both James and me in the course. She had no idea what denomination was sponsoring the lessons (I'm so thankful it was the Seventh-day Adventist Church). Her only objective was to get a little religion into her teenage grandchildren.

Sending for the lessons was one thing, but getting us to do them was another. We kept putting them aside, with no intention of finishing them. However, Mama would "stay on us" until they were completed, and mailed them back to Los Angeles from Baltimore, Maryland, where we lived. Somehow, James wiggled out of finishing the course, but Mama wouldn't let me slide by. As I neared the end of those 22 lessons, God's amazing grace took hold of my heart. I found myself accepting the Sabbath and all the other fundamental truths of Scripture that have become so precious to me.

I subsequently entered the ministry (Mama's prophecy came true), and have been an Adventist pastor for the past 38 years, the last two serving as president of my conference.

Looking back, there is no doubt whatsoever that I was a brand plucked out of the fire in a city of more than one million people. Why His grace was given to me, "who am less than the least of all saints,"1 I still marvel to this day! I praise Him, also, that I was permitted to be an instrument in His hands to bring my grandmother, my mother, my twin brother and 15 other members of my family into a saving knowledge of the Third Angel's Message.

There's a hymn that says, "What He's done for others, He'll do for you."2 God's amazing grace has come into my life that I might share the Good News with others. It has also been given to you for you to share it with your grandparents, your parents, your siblings, your children and all others whom the Almighty brings into your life. For you see, one day we will all rejoice around His throne because of this AMAZING GRACE.

Jerome Davis is the president of the Lake Region Conference.

1. Ephesians 3:8

2. Words and music by Stuart Hamblen, "It Is No Secret," copyright©Hamblen Music Company, Canyon Country, California.