As a young girl at the age of 6 years old, I was sent to attend a nearby Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland. However, my stepmother frequently attended a Baptist church on the other side of town, and my father declined to connect with any church. I was told that he did not go to church because he still missed my mother, who died at my birth. I heard that he was angry with God. However, while dad was distant from God and me, I found a closeness to the one I learned to be my heavenly Father at the little church, Lauraville Methodist. My first-grade elementary school teacher was also my Vacation Bible School and Sunday School teacher. Over the next several years, she taught me scriptures and impressed upon me that God loved me. The pastor helped me understand how and why Jesus died for me. I remember several times; tears flowed down my face when I heard about Jesus dying on the cross for the people of the world. The world – I knew that included ME! Whenever tears would flow, I would quickly wipe them away or try to hide them from my friends who sat on each side of me. I wondered why they were not crying too.
One Sunday morning at the age of 12, I knelt at the font and was baptized. God had begun a new life in me, and I knew that Lauraville Methodist made a significant impact on my life. I continued to attend that church until I went away to college in Raleigh, NC, at 16 years old.
In college, I studied elementary education for the first two years but became concerned because I thought that teaching a child was too big of a task for me. Believing that I was not mature enough to handle the responsibility, I decided to stop schooling and work for six years. In 1979, I returned to college in South Jersey and finished my bachelor’s degree in Radio/TV. During those six years, the direction of my life was challenged with the death of my father, an ailing and terminally ill aunt whom I lived with, and a non-existent connection with the church, which I knew I needed. I thought about going home and returning to Lauraville Methodist but found out from childhood friends that the church was closed a few years prior.
So, at the age of 24, through a group of college friends at one of their Bible study sessions in Philadelphia, I reaffirmed my faith in Jesus Christ acknowledging my acceptance of God’s grace by faith. Now, as I contemplate my earlier years, I see that ‘prevenient grace’ was there through many of my life experiences. This same grace has influenced how God has been shaping my life and inner spirit for kingdom work. God’s justifying grace reassures me that I am forgiven of my sins. Moreover, throughout my Christian life and walk, sanctifying grace will lead me to consistent holiness.
My reaffirmation to God and an endeavor to right living encouraged me to spend many hours studying the Bible, meditating, and memorizing scripture. Immediately, I felt called to reach the spiritually ‘lost’ through witnessing and sharing the Gospel with family, friends, and several street evangelism teams in Philadelphia and Maryland. John 3:16 continually burned in my heart— “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. That whosoever believeth in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life.” I also shared the Word of God through teaching Sunday school and Bible study. I acknowledged my call to ministry and mission and preached my first sermon, among many in 1987 for young teen girls.
It was the same year of preaching my first sermon that I served on an evangelism team as a leader to 40 teenagers in the Petén Jungle of Guatemala. My primary functions were to prepare and cook meals, teach Bible study, and to counsel the youth. The team’s primary assignment was to build an airplane hangar, a staff house for the missionaries and to teach scriptures to the 40 orphans at the mission called El Rancho de Los Niños.
In March of 1988, I married the love of my life, Tony. Since then, we have enjoyed serving God, the first love of our lives. Many times, when you see one, you see the other. Other times Tony can be heard singing. Moreover, sometimes you see us both teaching the Word of God together.
While I desire to help build godly principles in the lives of Christians, Tony finds joy in teaching the Bible’s prophetical books and how they impact our lives. Tony began singing at the age of three with the little Harmonettes at St. Matthew’s United Methodist Church in Turners Station. As a teen, he sang with puppeteer and Elmo creator Kevin Clash. At the age of 15, he and a childhood friend, Glen cut a 45-record called “Talking About.” As an adult, he was a tenor voice with the Maryland State Boys’ Choir, and several church choirs. Under the direction of Tony, Latter Reign A Cappella Singing Group won several awards and sang at a presidential rally for the former President Barack Obama. Additionally, as a published cartoonist, Tony has taught cartooning to children at a local Christian school and a church group.
Realizing that God brought us together 31 years ago, our mission is to honor our Lord and Savior throughout the years that we are given. So far, serving as Dean of Adult Education at a Pentecostal Church, as a director and acting principal at a Christian elementary school, and as a spiritual leader in the United Methodist Church we have received rich blessings. Now, in 2019, God has blessed me with the special opportunity to pastor at West Montgomery United Methodist Church in Dickerson, MD. We, Tony and I, come as a package deal, and we are honored to serve.
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2016 – Pastor Wilhelmina Street graduated Wesley Theological Seminary with a Masters in Divinity
