Joli Cullen

― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

I was born in 1968 in a suburb of Denver, Colorado. My mom and dad divorced when I was very young. I grew up with my mom and my older brother. When I was 11 years old, we lived in a townhome, and my mom worked lots of jobs to support my brother and I. One day our neighbor came knocking at the door. My mom had been playing some rock music rather loudly, and I expected the neighbor, Mrs. Pewter, to ask us to turn the music down. But she didn't. She asked my mom if she would like to come to church. 

We really liked the church. Mrs. Pewter was the organ player there. My mom joined the choir. She was a really good singer. One day, pastor Bob came by our home and shared a gospel presentation with us.  My mom, my brother and I accepted Jesus as our savior. We were all three baptized on the same day.

My earliest recollections about church was that there were many sermons on "The Rapture". I remeber the pastor saying once that you might not get to see the Bronco game this afternoon, the rapture might happen. I remeber watching the movies, "A Thief in the Night" and " A Distant Thunder", at church. 

My mom remarried the same year that I turned 11, and we ended up moving with my step dad to Sandpoint, Idaho. We did not have a home to move into, just 20 acres of land, and my stepdad was going to build us our home. We spent the summer living in a big tent. it was big enough for a kitchen table and bed frames that my stepdad had built. We kept our milk cold down in a well. The house did not get finished in time for the winter so we had to rent a house. I loved the house we rented. It was on a little lake and we could go ice skating. It was a very long bus ride to school though. And it was too far away from town to stay involved in a church, but I did help with the Vacation Bible Schools in the summers as an assistant with my neighbor. The area was so beaiutifu, we lived very close to Lake Pend Oreille.

When I was going into 10th grade, we moved agin. This time to Middletown, New Jersey, and that is where I graduated high school. I was known as a "goody two shoes'. God protected me during my formative years and i just never had any desires for anything the world had to offer me at that age. I loved listening to Christian artists of that time. I had many friends who were Catholic and Jewish. There were not many Evangelicals that went to my school. My mom and stepdad had started a family together while we were in Idaho, and I had 3 half sisters I adored. They stopped going to church though, so I rode my bike to church and joined a youth group.

I graduated high school just in time for my family to move again. Now we were headed to the Florida Keys. We lived on Marathon Key. I started driving to Key Largo to attend church and met my husband, Doug, in the singles group.

God was orchestrating every step of my journey from Colorado to Idaho to the Florida Keys.

Thank God for His plans and purposes for us. 

Doug and I got married in 1986, and God blessed us with three children,  a boy and two girls. We were both very involved serving at FBC Key Largo. I taught in children's ministry.

In 1995, we started attending Key Largo Baptist Church ( now known as Beachurch). It was there that God called us into full time ministry though we didnt know what it would be at the time. My friend Michelle and her husband, along with Doug and I started a children's ministry together until both families felt called into fulll time missions.

We attended a pregnancy care center banquet in Miami, and heard the moving testimony of Gianna Jessen, who was aborted, but did not die. She was 16 at the time and she sang and shared her testimony. After that banquet we began to train to volunteer with the local pregnancy center. Eight years later, we surrendered and left our home and business and Doug began attending Bible College. Upon Graduating 4 years later, Choose Life Ministrioes began, and we have been traveling and sharing the message of the Sanctity of Human Life across America.

In the last 23 years of ministry we have seen God work mightily in our nation and we continue to pray that we will once again be a nation that embraces a culture of LIFE.  We never even imagined that Roe V wade would be overturned, but it was! And not only have we seen God at work in our nation, but in every church where we go and speak. We have seen God answer prayers and bring healing, restoration, and redemtion. 

God has healed Doug and I both as we have had many health battles along the way, and a car accident in 2024 where I required emergency trauma surgery. I praise God for His watchcare over my LIFE. In 2007 my appendix burst while we were traveling and sharing, and God heard the prayers of my family and church family and restored my health. I am so thankful to God for His call on my LIFE to share with children the message of LIFE, and to see them come to know the savior. Its because of the supprt an prayers or our ministry partners, that we are able to keep oing and I thank God for His faithfulness, love, mercy and grace.