God started “kind of nudging at my heart,” she said.

Over a half million students celebrate free speech by participating in Bring Your Bible to School Day, according to Focus on the Family.

Isabella, a 13-year-old from Minnesota thought Bring Your Bible to School Day was a cool event after reading about it in Focus on the Family’s Brio magazine. However, she didn’t think it was something she would be able to at her school.

“I was kind of afraid that kids at my school were gonna judge me or that they would make fun of me,” she told FaithIt. “But then God started kind of nudging at my heart.”

Just three weeks before the event, the magazine with the article fell on the floor of her bedroom, which provoked her to re-read the article.

“I was looking at it again, and so I went to the website…and it was kind of like God was [saying], ‘Come on Bella, just do it, I just want you to do this. It’s not gonna hurt you. It’s a good thing for you.’ And so I was like, ‘Okay God, I’m gonna do this.”

This nudge prompted her to ask her school officials for permission to put posters about the event around the school where other events and topics were advertised. She began to worry when she didn’t get a response from school officials and thought she might be getting in trouble. When her parents saw her concern, they took her to the BringYourBible.org website and reviewed the “Know Your Rights” section that explained student should have the right to put up posters announcing the event.

This was a very encouraging moment for Isabella.

“That really helped encourage me, just knowing that my parents are always behind me, no matter what as long as I’m doing it for God and for the right reasons,” she said.

Several days later, her principal left her with a heartening update: “He said, by the way, when you go into lunch today, your poster’s gonna be up there.”

When she went into the lunchroom, she felt a really cool sense of pride, she said.

Isabella was vocal about the event with friends, the kids on her bus. She even made an announcement at church.

“I asked my youth pastor, ‘cause we have this little stage in our youth group…so I went up there and told everybody what it was about and I told them that on the day of Bring Your Bible to School Day, before school started, we could all go around the flagpole and pray.”

When the event finally came, Isabella led her classmates in voluntary prayer. About 20 of her classmates also joined her in bringing Bibles into the school and reading them during free time.

“It was a really cool experience because all of us were holding and hands and just praying and giving glory to God.”

“This is a new thing for me because, at our school, it’s not normal to see kids praying or doing that type of stuff. People keep it to themselves if they do pray. So this is a very public thing for us to do.”

In addition to exposing her classmates to an event that she held close to her heart, she also felt like a lot more people were more open to just having there Bible out there and praying, she said.

This also gave Isabella the opportunity to have more conversations with her friends about her faith and even invite them to church with each other. What she loved about this event was being able to shatter the stigma that Christians just hide their faith.

“I think a lot of people just think that Christians hide out and we just are all enclosed and just keep the Bible to ourselves, but that’s not true. We need to share the Bible with everyone because God isn’t just for us – He needs to be shared.”

What an incredible initiative! Do you think kids should be more encouraged to participate in events like this?