Tamara Daniels

After attending my first Vacation Bible School at six years old, I knew I was supposed to be in church.

I started walking myself down the street from where I lived to go to church every Sunday. I didn’t own a Bible of my own, but my Sunday school teacher presented me with one after attending for a few months. It was pink with my name embossed in silver, and I was so excited (I still have it today).

It was at this church that I asked Jesus to forgive me of my sins and come into my heart and save me forever. I continued attending this church for several more years because that’s where I knew for sure the Holy Spirit existed. Unfortunately, I eventually stopped attending for one reason or another.  

When I was 11 and getting ready to enter middle school, there was a musical instrument demo at my school. I heard a girl, Patty Tucker, demo her saxophone for us and knew immediately that was what I wanted to play. I begged my mom to get a saxophone for me, but I knew my parents didn’t have the money to buy it, which made me sad.

Then, right before school started, my mom surprised me and said she would try to get a loan and buy it. She did, and I was so excited. This poor saxophone was so expensive and so badly made that my band teachers loaned me saxophones to play. I learned how to read music and played for the next eight years.

My mom attended all of my concerts and made sure to get me to every rehearsal on time. I appreciated that so much more as an adult because my mom is deaf. She has never heard me play one single note.

After I completed school, I quit playing music. For years I felt that something was missing from my life, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Twenty-two years after I had quit playing, I had this huge urge within myself to start playing again and prayed about this and made a pact with Jesus that if I ever got the opportunity to play saxophone again I would not turn it down.

I didn’t have a saxophone of my own anymore so I needed to buy one. To my surprise, three weeks later I received a phone call from someone I didn’t know and he asked if I would be interested in playing in an alumni jazz band. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and in keeping my end of the deal with Jesus, I said yes.

That is when I started playing again, this time as an adult. During that time I was also asked to play in the orchestra at a church I had attended as a teenager. I played in both of those bands for nearly 10 years, then Covid invaded our lives and both of those bands were put on hold and never came back together.

Thankfully, during that time I had been asked to substitute in a couple local bands and with another church. At one of the rehearsals, another player asked me if I wanted to go to Portugal and play in a band. I thought for sure he was joking.

He wasn’t.

Six weeks later I was in Portugal playing with Metro Big Band. This was my first introduction to Global Missions Project and music missions. I wasn’t attending a church at the time, and this was the nudge I needed to find a church to start attending regularly. I was playing in the church orchestra, so I decided to start attending their church services.

What a huge blessing this has been on my life. I had no idea how badly I needed this in my life. After that first project to Portugal, I reflected on how I got there. It all started back with me knowing I needed to attend church and my mom obeying the direction she was given by Jesus. She sacrificed money that was very hard to come by and allowed me to start learning and playing music.

It wasn’t until that point in my adult life that I realized Jesus had been preparing me to help spread his Word by sharing music with people locally and around the world. It all started at six when I knew I wanted to be in church to learn about the Gospel, then at 11 when I had a very strong desire to learn and play music, then as an adult when I made the deal that I would never say no if I was asked to play music, and finally to today where I can use my knowledge of all to help spread the joy and promise that comes with knowing Jesus.