April Guillote experienced culture shock on many levels in moving from South Dakota to south Louisiana, including the people, the food, the language as well as her faith.

Guillote grew up mainly in a Protestant church but after marrying her husband and moving to to Abbeville in 2012, she started attending Our Savior’s Church, a non-denominational church.

“It was quite a culture shock coming down here,” Guillote said. “That (Our Savior’s Church) was my first introduction into a more charismatic view.”

Coming from a background with a more conservative, Reformed theology, Guillote’s new way of looking at her faith was eye-opening.

For Guillote, she looks to Ephesians 2:8-10 for her faith.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do,” the verse states.

As a Lutheran, Guillote said, she believes Jesus Christ is the only route to Heaven and it is through His faith alone and His faith that we are saved.

While in South Dakota, people are more driven by that theology, Guillote said her faith here, especially in South Louisiana, the Catholic and charismatic Pentecostal views differ.

“It’s that works-based faith that I really had to adjust to and understand the language barriers even,” Guillote said. “Words have different meanings and what they mean to them, it was different then what I grew up and understood in that Reformed theology.”

One such meaning between the two states is being blessed.

“Blessed, meaning truly gifted from God versus happy,” Guillote said. “So a lot of people (here) interchange the word ‘Happy’ for ‘Blessed’ and it’s a much more deeper experience than that (in the Reformed tradition).”

Through wanting to learn the way of life down here, Guillote said she has learned to ask more questions, particularly its meaning when it pertains to faith so she can understand where someone is coming from.

Guillote said she loves the more easy-going attitude in South Louisiana.

For the last eight years, one of Guillote’s favorite parts about living in Abbeville is the weather. Living in South Dakota where it snowed nine months out of the years, she has enjoyed the long, hot summers.

“Nine months of winter is not ideal, but I can do it,” Guillote said. “But I wanted to get as far away from the snow as possible.”

She was almost able to achieve it, until it snowed in the winter of 2017.

“It was like, ‘You guys lied to me,’” she joked.

As she continues on her journey through life in Abbeville — snow or not, Guillote still leans on her faith — as it is her life.

“It is what makes me breathe,” Guillote said. “It is what gives me life on earth abundantly and I know it will give me life eternal. It’s not everything I do, but everything that Christ did for me. And that’s it.”