Tinlee Jeffrey

Hey everyone! My name is Tinlee Jeffrey, and I'm a Junior at Barron High School.

I'm really passionate about the power of sharing your testimony and how much it can impact people, so want to share a bit of my story with you.

Growing up, my parents didn't raise me in the church. I went to my first Sunday service when I was 12, but it wasn't until about two years ago that I really began to understand what Christianity was. That understanding started when I asked my mom a simple question: "What happened to my ears? Why don't I hear like everyone else?"

She told me when I was born, I was extremely sick with bacterial meningitis, which is where your brain swells up larger than your skull can contain and fluid and infection surrounds your brainstem. It's rare, and serious, and the doctors didn't know if I would survive. Statistically, only about 26,000 people get it in a decade, and 9 in 10 of the people diagnosed with the disease sadly pass away due to the infection, so at the time I was given a 10% chance of surviving. I then got sick with C-Diff, influenza, pneumonia, and numerous infections and my chance of living went down to 1%. I survived, thank God, and I am blessed to be here right now!

But I didn't come out of this with a clean slate. When I was born, I did not pass my newborn hearing screening which led the doctors and my parents to learn I was deaf. Because of the infection in my brain and my hearing loss in general, I have had 14 surgeries where my biggest surgery was called a double mastoidectomy where they had to cut off my ear, move the bones behind my ear around, and completely reconstruct my skull. We then found out that it was a life-changing decision to do that surgery because I went from being deaf to being able to hear 1 in every 3 words someone says! This doesn't sound like a lot, but it really was! I now wear hearing aids but without them I can hear 75% in my right ear and only 25% in my left ear, so I have half of my hearing today.

After learning about my story, it really came to me that God put me in this world for a reason, because He could have had me be that 99% that passed away but He didn't so I started to try to find what that reason was. I started playing soccer at 3 years old. In the last 4 years or so, I have played on all different levels of soccer, including recreation, state league, high school league, and even a few appearances in the National League. Through my years of playing soccer, I had in my mind the verse Colossians 3:23 which states, "Whatever you do, do it for the Lord with all your heart." When I came to my high school team, I was given a random jersey number because I joined late, and it was 3. Once I started my national team, I was also given a random number and the number I was given was 23. 3 and 23. Colossians 3:23. This is now my goal for my life, whatever end up doing to do it for the Lord, and completely for Him with all my heart.

I got baptized on July 17, 2024 which was one of the most impactful things in my life.

I went into the idea of being baptized thinking that when I came up from the water something amazing would happen. So I went to the water, got baptized, but when I came back up nothing happened. This was hard for a couple days because I felt like my baptism didn't matter but now looking back, I see how much this affected me emotionally and spiritually when I was looking at it physically. This was the wakeup call I needed to learn that God isn't visible but that doesn't mean you won't be able to feel His presence. God doesn't always move in fireworks, sometimes He moves in whispers!

The next year I made the decision to switch schools and come to Barron. Within the first month of school, I decided that FCA was going to be a thing I did to make a difference here. So I started finding kids, advisors, and getting everything sorted out to start. This is when I truly discovered how amazing FCA is. FCA helped me grow in my faith in ways I can't even explain and a lot of amazing things came from this.

One of the biggest is my book, From Fear to Faith. It tells my story of how I went from barely surviving birth to now living life for Christ everyday. My book took me on some amazing journeys this summer. I was invited to the eXperience Jesus conference (Jwhich was a nationwide conference where leaders in the faith were brought together to learn how to share the gospel with people and it was amazing.

Weeks later then was asked to speak at the FCA Leadership camp at University of Northwestern in Minnesota. This gave me an amazing look into what FCA means to so many athletes and coaches.

Being able to go on stage in front of hundreds of people and tell them my story was a breakthrough moment for me. It gave me this overwhelming sense of purpose and strength to share my story on even bigger platforms and stages. I then decided to publish my second book called Every Story Saves and explain how every story has the power to save a life. I wrote this in order to advocate for mental health for athletes, Christians, teenagers, and people with a disability all of which I can identify with. This is why I'm here, because I've seen how sharing my story has helped people find Christ and save a life!