When I was around the age of sixteen, I had been studying the Bible for a couple years. I began to read about the Holy Spirit and speaking in tongues, and wondered why no one spoke with tongues anymore. (I did not know that many people do.) I had been taught that it passed away along with the other manifestations of the Spirit, and apostles, and prophets and the rest. However, when I began reading the Bible for myself, I could not find at what point all of those things passed away. God finally convinced me that I needed the Holy Spirit after he revealed to me the parable of the virgins in Matthew 25. Around the same time my twin sister became involved with a charismatic group of people who spoke in tongues, and she told me all about it. She said if I wanted to be speak in tongues, I would have to ask for it. So I started asking God for tongues. Sometime later, after reading Luke 11:13, I was convinced that I should ask for the Holy Spirit, not tongues. Because of what I was raised in, I could not receive it very quickly. It took over three years from the time I began to ask.

I was full of doubt, so I may have said few words in tongues months before I actually started praying fluently, but it doesn't matter. When I first knew for sure that God had baptized me in the Holy Spirit, I spoke complete sentences immediately. I was on my spring break from school in the spring of 2000. I was just dropping my twin sister off at her dorm room in Dallas, and we were discussing my difficulty in receiving the Holy Spirit. I knew something was happening in my spirit, but I was afraid that any words I spoke would be my own and not from God. She actually said one thing that did help me. She told me not to worry whether they were my own words or God's - basically saying you have nothing to lose. She said God would not force me to speak, I had to will myself to speak. After this, I began speaking freely. I do not know what I said at all, but I do know one of the words sounded like 'adonai'. This later encouraged me, because I knew from somewhere in my background that this word meant 'Lord'.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is just an act of obedience as is baptism in water. Acts 5:32 says the Father gives the Holy Spirit to those that obey. The Holy Spirit is a gift, and tongues are the evidence of that gift: (Acts 10:45-46).

Tongues are for personal edification. (Jude 20) There is also a tongue that edifies the body when interpreted, and then it is equal to prophecy. (1 Cor. 14:5) These are two separate uses of tongues.