7God will give you Beauty for Ashes! Everyone has a story. However, I would like to share with you of how Jesus Christ transformed my life from a lifestyle of hopelessness, despair, and defeat to a lifestyle of hope, faith and victory in Christ. I was traveling down a destructive path, searching for love, peace, rest, contentment, satisfaction, and fulfillment in all of the wrong relationships and things. Then one day, I met the Lover of my soul, and He restored my soul. I found out that I was trying to fill a void in my heart and soul that only God could fulfill. "In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God; He heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears" (Psalm 18:6). God gave me "beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness" (Isaiah 61:3a). Vernell graduated from the Baltimore School of the Bible June 5, 2006. She is a licensed minister, and she received her credentials under the Worship Center Ministers Network on July 21, 2010. Vernell is a volunteer chaplain at the Lancaster County Prison in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is the author of three books; Transforming Power: Turning on the Light in Dark Places, Transforming Power: It's Time for a Change, and Transforming Power Walking on the Path with God. She is the co-owner of Hightower Construction and Installing INC. alongside her husband Tyrone Hightower. Vernell and her husband have three children, one daughter in-law, one son-in-law, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.