Sofi was born in Latvia the day WWII started. When her father, a Red Army officer, left for the front, Sofi’s mother was taken prisoner. 

Sofi explained, “The Nazis took all the children back to Germany. Those that could pass off as German children were given to families to be raised as good Germans. I had dark hair, so I was taken to an orphanage. The Nazis conducted experiments on us, trying to change our eye color.”

At the end of the war, the Soviet army liberated the orphanage. Sofi was reunited with her mother, who had spent time at a concentration camp in Latvia. 

“It took years for my mother to find out what happened to my other siblings,” said Sofi. “Finally, she learned my brother and sister had made it to Israel, but we weren’t allowed to leave the Soviet Union to join them.”

Sofi and her mother finally made it to Israel in 1972. She later married and made a life for herself and her family. 

Sofi said, “I grew up without a childhood, so when I had my own children, I gave them everything I had been robbed of. I was so glad to be able to raise them in Israel.”

When Sofi and her husband got older, he had to move into an assisted living facility while she was left at home to deal with her own health issues. Sofi was lonely and bills were piling up, so when CBN Israel found out about her, we started taking her food baskets.

Sofi said, “You bring groceries, visit regularly and spend time with me, and you never forget to call me on my birthday. I can feel that you truly care.”  

Thanks to the support of CBN Israel donors, Sofi knows she and other Holocaust survivors are not alone.

Sofi said, “I am so happy for people like you who still remember me. There are not many of us left. It’s great to know that you care.”
 

Ross Johnston is a revivalist who is a leader and co-founder of California Will Be Saved. He has a heart for loving Jesus, building family, and preaching the Gospel. He is also one of the persons who is on the frontlines in leading revival in California as well as on a mission to unite the body of Christ. He recently left his six-figure job at one of the top online businesses in America to become a full-time missionary in California with the desire to lay his life down for the Gospel.  

TESTIMONY:

Ross was born by artificial insemination and grew up in a lesbian household with two moms. At 15 years old he was invited to church where he encountered the Holy Spirit and presence of God for the first time in his life. He then surrendered his life to Jesus and became born again. Shortly after he began attending college in San Diego where he earned his degree and began to run multiple businesses – and eventually walked away from the Lord. When 2020 came, the Holy Spirit spoke to him and said, “If you don’t stand now, you never will.” This was the moment he knew he was born for and decided to resign from his full-time job and pursue what the Lord had spoken to him about preaching the gospel. His heart burns for revival: that the church would be revived back to first love for Jesus, the lost would be revived to life through Jesus and that society would be reformed back to God’s design. 

REVIVALIST:

Ross’s own words read as follows: “My greatest desire is that the presence of Jesus would become the greatest reality and desire of our lives. To love Him and be loved by Him are truly better than life itself. My hope is that in the same way the spirit of revival woke me up, set me on fire and launched me to impact my family and the nations of the earth that the same would happen for you. I believe this community will ignite revival in you which will lead to revival through you in a lost and broken world. I truly believe revival is the only hope for our world, why? We’re out of all other solutions, it is revival or bust. Either the body of Christ catches this spirit of revival to revive our society back to Jesus or the future may be one we can’t quite imagine."

Ross believes that revival is the hope for world. We can’t look to the elected officials or “social and economics” for answers. Our answer will only be found when the Spirit of the Lord begins to move in our generation. Ross breaks revival down into three “strands.”

•    The Church “body of Christ” is awakened and revived to her first love-Jesus.
•    Non-believers surrender to Christ, are born again and thus “revived back to life.”
•    Spirit filled believers are influenced and governed by Jesus, they will affect all spheres of society and will pray the prayer found in Matthew 6 “May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Jesus is the only way to revival; He alone is the “hope of all nations.”  

“The Revivalists is a private community with a singular prophetic vision to equip, train and send revivalists across the nations. This community is for stay-at-home moms, business owners, students, athletes, and everyone else in between. His desire is that regardless of occupation or position you would begin to experience revival in your personal life that would then flow out of you to impact the world around you.”

Discover more about Ross Johnston at his website: RossJohnston.co.
 

“Everyone says, ‘God's right here, He can help you. He hears you; He sees you, He knows you.’ Then why as a child am I experiencing this abuse? I felt God left me. I felt abandoned by Him.” Talissa Thomas didn’t always feel forsaken by God. As a child, she enjoyed going to church and prayed often, yet being the pastor’s kid, she felt pressured to put on a good face. She says, “I felt like sometimes I was in a fishbowl where everyone was kind of like looking in on me. If I did something wrong, I kept it hidden because I didn't want anyone to know or think less of me.”

In middle school, Talissa had even more to hide: a growing dependence on prescription drugs. It started with taking pain pills for ongoing health issues. Then, she needed Xanax to help with depression. Quickly, she depended on both. She recalls, “That was an escape from like the real world and when that high, when that attention went away, then I was left with a lot of shame and guilt because I was living this double lifestyle.”

Then, in junior high, a distant relative started physically and emotionally abusing Talissa. She asked God to make it stop, but it didn’t. Talissa says, “I felt so abandoned and so isolated. Everything I was learning about Him was so further from the truth than what I was experiencing.” Despite her continued dependence on prescription meds, Talissa maintained the appearance of being a good Christian, all-the-while growing further from God. Then at 17, while online, she discovered a new way to appease her pain: pornography. She recalls, “I watched my first pornography film and then it was like endorphins being released. It was literally like the same high I felt from taking the opiate and prescription medication. I would feel that same sensation of just calmness and just feeling good and like nothing else matters in the world.”

By the time Talissa left home to attend a two-year Christian leadership college, she’d completely swapped her pill addiction for pornography. She recalls, “The cycle that I was going in literally felt like I was like going deeper and deeper and deeper into the hole. I would go on binges where I wouldn't sleep at night. I would go in the church bathrooms and watch pornography. I would have to pull over on the side of the road to watch pornography. The pornography completely took over my life in a way that I would have never dreamed or experienced.”

Even as her addiction grew, she told herself it was harmless. Talissa says, “I would be like, ‘I am watching pornography, but I'm not sleeping around.’ And so it was like this whole line that I tiptoed my whole life. Like I'm not harming anybody. That's what was in my head, I’m not harming anybody but however, the whole time I’m harming myself.”

After graduation, Talissa started interning at a church. However, keeping up the façade became overwhelming. She says, “I can't tell anybody what's going on because it would just obliterate like everyone's opinions of me. I was like, ‘God, like I am so exhausted. Like I know this is not what you have for me and I don't know where you're at.' I feel so abandoned, so isolated, so defeated, so depressed, and the list goes on and on. And so, I don't know, I think it was just the feelings of that just like, I just have nothing else to give. Like I just need to tell someone my story.”

So, one night she decided to confess her addiction to her roommate, also an intern at the church. Talissa recalls, “It was so scary to say and to finally admit it, but at the same time it was kind of a sense of relief. Like, oh my gosh. Like I finally have told somebody like how bad this progressed. Like, I didn't feel as alone.” Her roommate suggested Talissa go to Mercy Multiplied; a program for women struggling with trauma and addiction. Talissa recalls saying, “Absolutely not! I was like, I'm gonna need God himself to come down from Heaven, appear to me in person and tell me this is what you need to do for me to do it.”

Talissa says that practically happened when the next Sunday God spoke to her through her pastor’s message. She says, “God for some reason laid it on his heart to speak to women specifically struggling in addiction and sexual addiction. And I remember sitting there in my pew and being like, He hears me. For so long I didn't know where God was for so long. I wondered if He saw me. And in that moment, I had never felt so seen or so loved even in the brokenness that I was in.”

The next day, Talissa confessed her addiction to the church leadership. They prayed for her, encouraged her, and helped her apply to Mercy Multiplied. She says, “I had told myself so many lies; ‘so many people are gonna be disgusted with you, Talissa, so many people are going, not even gonna wanna talk to you.' However, I went in there and it was the complete opposite. I felt so loved.” Through the program, Talissa says she was delivered from her addictions and rededicated her life to God. She says, “I let God know, I need to forgive you for these things because those were barriers from keeping me to getting like closer to Him. Because I had this resentment built up. Like, ‘where were you when I was going through this?’ He hadn't gone anywhere. It was me who kept going further and further away from Him.”

Today she is happily married with a growing family. As a behavioral therapist, Talissa is helping others struggling with trauma and addictions walk in the freedom only God provides. She says, “You are more than what you're experiencing, that you are more, and you deserve more and you're worthy of more than the addiction or that trauma that you're experiencing. God is so good, and He will walk you through it. You don't have to feel alone or isolated or abandoned because God is everything but that and He's there for you.”