Several years ago, the Lord gave me a vision. In it, I was standing in the middle of a landfill or some type of trash heap. Before me stood Jesus. He was holding a huge, bulging trash bag and motioned for me to peek inside of it.

As I leaned forward to see what was in the bag, Jesus opened it. Inside was–you guessed it–trash. The bag was filled to the brim with it. But then Jesus did something I thought was rather odd. He pulled out some gloves and handed them to me, then motioned for me to begin taking items out of the bag. I put on the gloves and did as Jesus instructed.

At first, taking trash out of the bag wasn’t so bad. But the further into the bag I got, the more putrid and nasty the trash became. It quickly became obvious that the deeper into the bag I dug, the older the trash was! The smell was terrible and digging through that bag was becoming more and more disgusting. I had to pause and tell the Lord I couldn’t dig anymore. The mess I was facing was simply too awful for me to continue.

It was at this point that Jesus put on some gloves and took out two masks-one for me and one for Him. After He handed me my mask and motioned for me to put it on (He never spoke in the vision, only gestured), He began helping me take the rest of the garbage out of the bag. The smell was still unbearable and there was stuff in that sack that made vomit look appetizing, but having God help me dig through it made the process a little easier.

We’d finally almost reached the bottom of the bag and I began to notice that underneath all that garbage, there seemed to be little flecks of sparkling lights. A closer inspection of these little flickers revealed that they were tiny diamonds! Hundreds, perhaps thousands of them....at the bottom of this garbage bag!

Once we'd removed the last of the trash, there was nothing left in the bag but diamonds. Jesus then stuck His hand inside the sack and pulled out a gigantic diamond, about the size of a soccer ball. He placed the diamond on my head and it became a glistening crown. The next thing I knew, I was dressed in a beautiful, white, flowing gown adorned head to toe with diamonds. The sparkle from the jewels lit up the entire junk yard we stood in.

Then Jesus reached into the bag one last time, pulled out a palm full of little diamonds and handed them to me. I asked Him what He wanted me to do with these smaller jewels. He made a gesture as one throwing out seeds into a field to harvest and I knew instantly that the little diamonds were for me to disburse.

When there were no more diamonds left in the bag, the Lord threw the bag into an incinerator.

That vision was the first time I was able to see what God saw when He looked at me. In His eyes, I was a precious jewel, a diamond.

It is because of that vision that Diamond Ministry was born. It was created to minister to people, especially women, who have been bogged down by their past, buried under the garbage of shame, anger, guilt and harsh words that have kept them from being the true jewels God designed.