Northwest College
Christina Pablo
Good company

The only dose of religion Christina Pablo knew was the year she spent at a Catholic school as a child. She spent the rest of her childhood, she says, in an agnostic home. By age 12, her parents had divorced.

“That was the beginning of a downhill slope for me,” says Pablo, 20, who lives in San Francisco. “Middle school and junior high were a really tough time.” Pablo began a futile search for acceptance in friends and alcohol. At 14 she decided it was time to make a change.

“I don’t know how the transition happened, but all of a sudden I decided I wanted to go to church,” Pablo recalls. “I didn’t know what kind of church, I didn’t know where, I just wanted to go to church and see what it was like.” She met a Christian girl at school and visited her church, Full Life Christian Center (A/G) in San Francisco. In September 1997, Pablo accepted Christ as Savior. In 2000, Pablo and a friend from church visited Northwest College in Kirkland, Wash.

“We just showed up and stayed for four days and liked it, but it took several weeks of thinking and praying before I decided to attend because I wanted to be sure this was where God wanted me,” she says. “I found people there who pushed me closer to God.”

Pablo, a senior, majors in secondary education and minors in teaching English as a second language. Though she plans on teaching overseas for a few years after graduating, she says the Christian training she is receiving at Northwest is preparing her to fulfill her calling: teaching in public schools.

“Northwest helped me see things from a perspective I never had at home,” Pablo says. “I learned how to be a Christian wherever I go.”

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