Born and raised on St. Croix, Virgin Islands 🇻🇮

Mom to one amazing son, Elijah, who is now 20 and learning how to be an auto mechanic

Masters degree in holistic nutrition

Certified personal trainer for ten years

Now working as a nationally registered EMT in Seattle, WA

I gave my life to Jesus in the fall of 2022 in a small country town of Louisiana where I was living at the time. It happened spontaneously and organically while getting ready for the day. But God had been knocking on my door for a looooong time before that. I finally answered His call and God has turned my world upside down in the best ways.

This part below is not part of my bio but just a little more backstory for your information.

After I gave my life to Jesus, I immediately stopped practicing and teaching yoga. I threw away all books, clothing, items associated with yoga and new age practices. God cleaned up my language and I stopped swearing like a sailor. I started reading the Bible and found an amazing church where I got baptized in March 2023. In July 2024, I drove cross country by myself to Washington state to follow the Lord’s command and pursue women’s ministry. On day two of my new life in WA, God showed me three times that He wanted me to volunteer at a women’s prison. From there, things happened quickly and I started as a volunteer with Prison Fellowship, a Christian organization dedicated to sharing the gospel with the incarcerated and helping their families.

Life sure was a roller coaster the first year and a half here in WA, and I started to question if I had heard God incorrectly. I lost my job, housing, had very little money, and was all alone. But God provided for me every step of the way and just when I was about to give in and give up to my doubts and fears (my mom suggested I move back home to St. Croix for a bit), God stepped in to show that He wanted me to stay here in WA and changed all of my circumstances swiftly. I found a wonderful job at a private ambulance company in Seattle and have been working there since July, sharing the gospel and praying with patients and coworkers. I moved into a temporary home with a lovely couple until I could get back on feet and then earned enough money to find my own place in Seattle.

God has been too gracious; He is far better to me than I deserve. And now, I have the opportunity to share to a wider audience all the amazing things He has done and continues to do. And it’s all because of who God is, His goodness and love.

Welcome to 12 Minute Converse with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, His creation.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Praise God for you, Loni.

It's such a great pleasure to connect with you.

What part of the world are you in today?

So I'm in Seattle, Washington in the beautiful Pacific Northwest.

Wonderful.

Well, I had the opportunity to read a bit about you and I was very amazed by how you were able to communicate enthusiasm and excitement in the words that you wrote.

Where did you get that skill from though, the ability to write how you feel?

That is 100% the Lord.

It's funny, one of my best friends the other day compared me to a human chat GPT.

God has given me an amazing skill for writing and expression and I know there's a book brewing within me and it will eventually at some point come to life.

What an adventure though.

Yeah, I could see the book most definitely.

So take us on what your journey has been like over the past three years.

Yes.

So I moved, I left St. Croix in the fall of 2020.

So really at the height of COVID and I packed up everything and moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

And I always believed in God, but I didn't have a full understanding of the one true God that we now or I now know that is in the Bible.

And so I packed up everything, I moved to Louisiana and that in itself was quite the journey.

And I had been very deep into new age practices, occult, yoga, crystals, tarot, all of that stuff.

And really and truly I had been searching my entire life and I went down all these wrong paths.

And then I was part of this spiritual group that was this weird hybrid of Hinduism and a false Christianity.

And I had been following this group for a number of years and I was in my living room and I was on a group call with this group and they presented a situation and how some of the individuals responded to such a tragic situation.

It's like a dark veil had been lifted from my eyes.

And I knew in that moment that it was wrong and I did not want to be part of this anymore.

And I hung up the phone from that group call and that was it.

That was the last time I ever connected with that group, spoke to that group.

And for months, I felt spiritually lost.

And I was in this spiritual darkness and I started to pray.

And I asked God for direction because I really didn't know where I was supposed to go from here.

And I started seeing my younger sister.

Her childhood best friend was posting on Instagram and she had come to the Lord and she was just so open and free in her faith and something really inspired me.

And so I reached out to her and I asked her about her faith and she started answering questions.

And she asked me if I had a Bible and I said, I do, it's somewhere.

And she said, what's your address?

I'm going to send you one.

So she sent me a new Bible and she put me in touch with her pastor in Florida who was so selfless with his time.

And through this process of journeying towards Christ, it was one morning, I was in my bathroom getting ready for the day and Bianca, that's her name, she had sent me a of a pastor in California that was just lovingly and gently leading people to the Lord.

And there was something about his words that just struck my heart in that moment.

And I became overwhelmed and I sunk down to my knees in tears and I asked Jesus to come into my heart.

And it was, in some ways, the transformation was immediate.

The Lord showed me that practicing yoga and all of that stuff that I had been doing was not what he wanted me to do.

And I turned away from all of it.

I threw away hundreds of dollars of books, of clothing, of anything associated with that false ideology.

I threw it away.

And I went to my boss at my gym and I said, I can no longer teach yoga.

And she was surprised, but she supported my decision.

And I started reading my Bible.

The pastor in Florida helped me find an amazing church in and they embraced me.

I went on a discipleship journey with the pastor's wife.

I got baptized in March of 2023.

And it has just been, the things the Lord has done and continues to do for me over these past three and a half years is truly nothing short of remarkable.

Now, I saw that you're in Washington state.

I am.

So take me through how you got there.

I actually was in a relationship with someone and he had gotten an opportunity to move out here to Washington for a job.

And I honestly, I was scared.

I was scared to move out here because Washington is a very liberal state.

And being so new in my faith, I wasn't sure that I had the strength to be enveloped in this mindset here.

And I was scared that I was going to be isolated, that I wasn't going to make friends, that I wasn't going to find a church.

And so I pushed back and that created a lot of struggles in our relationship, as you can imagine.

And we did eventually end up breaking up.

But I honestly, to this day, believe that the Lord used that to plant a seed because shortly after that, the Lord started calling out to me and changing my perspective about moving to Washington.

And he reminded me through a video from another pastor that Jesus went into all the spaces that needed the healing, that needed the physician.

Jesus told us, is it not the sick that needs the physician?

And when I started having that perspective shift, I realized that I was wrong and I humbled myself.

And months later, God started encouraging me with his still, calm, quiet voice, I want you to move to Washington and pursue women's ministry.

And at first, I'll be honest, I wasn't sure if it was me having the desire to try and work things out with my ex, because we had gotten back together at that point.

And so I didn't respond right away to the call.

And I kept praying about it.

I kept praying about it.

Lord, I want your will to be done, not the desires of my heart.

And the answer was still the same.

Yes, I want you to move out there and pursue women's ministry.

So I finally answered the call and I said, all right, Lord, I'm going to do this.

And that's when things really started happening very quickly.

I needed a way to financially provide for myself through something professionally steady.

And at the time, I was a personal trainer and that was just not steady.

And I had years ago, been intrigued by becoming an EMT.

And he put that seed back in my heart.

And I ended up getting into an EMT program in Louisiana before I moved out here.

And God miraculously supplied all the finances to have it paid completely.

I didn't pay a cent for this program.

And I got through the EMT program, graduated, and I started working temporarily to get some initial experience.

And then the Lord said, it's time to go.

And everything came together so quickly.

It was in a matter of, I think it was five, six weeks.

And I packed up all my belongings in my car and I said goodbye to Louisiana.

And I drove cross country by myself with God to Washington.

And he planted me.

This is what took me by surprise where he wanted me in women's ministry.

And in God's divine wisdom, he knew that had he told me what he wanted me to do before I moved out here, I probably never would have gone.

How did you do that though, Lonnie?

How did you just move from being new to Washington to then being part of getting into the prisons and speaking with women?

I called the prison.

Yeah, I called the prison and I said, look, this is gonna sound wild.

And I said, I'm not affiliated with a church.

I'm just stepping out on faith here.

And they were confused.

They were like, well, we don't know where to put you.

So we're gonna put you in touch with our chaplain.

And the chaplain, everybody called him chappy.

He was like, I'm not sure where to put you.

So then he put me in touch with someone else who was the manager of a national program called Prison Fellowship.

And that program was actually started by a man named Chuck.

I can't remember his last name.

But Chuck was an advisor to President Nixon, and he was arrested for the Watergate stuff.

And it was in prison that he found the Lord.

And he was transformed.

Even behind bars, he felt that freedom.

And he was like, I want to give this to other incarcerated individuals.

So when he got out, he started Prison Fellowship, which is a Christian Bible-based program that goes into prisons all over the United States, both men and women prisons.

And I got connected.

And I also know this was a God thing because I got through the process of getting all my security clearance and badging and everything within about three months.

And I've been told by multiple individuals that it takes a year or more for people to get through that process.

And I got through in three months.

Five years from today, you're listening to this conversation.

What's a message you'd leave for future you?

To stay the course.

To keep putting God first in everything.

To continue reading my Bible and continue getting to know him through his word.

And just keep allowing Holy Spirit to transform me and to grow that fruit.

Also, not to give up praying for my future husband.

Before we close, is there anything else you'd like to share?

Just for the listeners out there, especially anyone who may have been hurt or betrayed or disappointed by people, don't allow that to make you give up on God.

And just remember that people are not God and God are not people.

And God will never disappoint you or betray you, leave you, forsake you.

And he is always, always there, ready and present in your life.

And just stay focused on that and everything will be okay.

Lonnie, a pleasure.

I treasure.

Thank you for being on What Is Inspired by 12 Minute Conference.