13.5%. the president goes to california tomorrow, colorado tomorrow night. republican presidential candidate michele bachmann was in iowa this past weekend for several campaign events. she spoke to this conversation at a service in cash out -- at cavalry bible church. she talked about the trip that her ancestors made to the u.s. before settling in iowa. she talks about how her fate has affected her life. trolley after arriving, she greeted congregation members. this is about 55 minutes. >> what is your name? good to meet you. hello, mary. you are an old farmer? i married a young one. >> thank you. >> she want to get a picture with you. >> did that work? could you find a camera so that we can get a picture? good morning, and jennifer. >> everybody needs to hear her in som >> i would use her role as testimony in introducing her. all have to say she is the mothe. there are so many other things. let's give a warm welcome to michele bachmann. >> good morning. it is wonderful to see the church full on a sunday morning. this is the day that the lord hath made. thank you for being here. i come here today as one new has been saved by the great jesus christ. i love the driveway to care. our family goes back seven generations. we go back to the 1850's. our family came here back in the 1850's. at that time, the life span in norway was about mid 50's. the life about mid-50's. that is about the time when they expired. my great grandfather and my great-grandmother looked about in norway and about 2% of the land was tillable. about 98% of the land here is tillable. they heard about this wonderful land of milk and honey known as iowa and they thought, what are we doing here in norway? we want a better chance for our children. it was a tremendous lack of faith. they sold their farm, everything they had. they have five baht -- they have five biological children and they bought tickets to get on the boat and go to the united states. this was a fairly new adventures still at that time. there had been 80 norwegians who had preceded them and come to iowa and a row something called the muskego manifesto. i am paraphrasing here. it talked about how wonderful this land was and they sent it back to norway as a letter. they talked about in the course of this letter that people can choose any profession they want, can choose to worship god any way they want, and this is something more wonderful than rich's. -- riches. based on those words as they sold their things and said, we want liberty and to practice our faith and a better life for our kids. does that sound familiar? they put it all on the line and they went down to the dock. everything they had literally was in their trunks. they have their oldest son, halver. he was 11 years of age, but he was a very tall norwegian. you would not know i descend from these people at all. he got down to the ship and the ship captain said, he needs an adult ticket. this is a child's ticket. the ticket was $25 and the family had just sold everything and bought the ticket. their parents -- the parents look at each other and look at the ship captain and said, well, we do not have any money. what are we going to do? the captain said, i am sorry. he cannot go on. think about this. they are about to embark on this ocean voyage thinking they may not make it across because it was very uncertain and they certainly would never come back again. here they had all the kids and everything they own -- they sold the farm. what are they going to do? they said, you will have to turn around and walked back to the village and find someone to live with because we have got to go. imagine that kind of heartbreak. these are the ancestors that we have descended from. the entire family was heartbroken. nobody was more heartbroken and halver at that moment. there were there at the shore. the whole family got on the ship. halver remained on the banks and when they were getting on, tears were coming out of their eyes and i guess at berkeley heart of the captain, too. he said, i guess we can have one market on board. it will not sink the ship. -- one more kid on board. it will not sink the ship. they took one month to get over to wisconsin. and from there, they literally had to cut down trees and build a wagon to be able to pull it across wisconsin to get to iowa. they got to desoto. you know where descoto is in wisconsin? they took a cross and actually turned the wagon into a boat. they must have gotten tart or something on that wagon to make it a vote. everything they have was on that wagon. they had a fairy and the women got across on the ferry. it is pretty wide. it was so horrific that the family recorded -- they were amazed at how, gracious the ferry captain was. the white had given them bread -- the wife had given them bread. then they record of this -- recorded this. and then they got to pay little town called jericho, iowa. the only thing in this area is a two lutheran churches. that tells you something about lutherans. if you have two lutheran churches on the same corner, you might have a division of opinion now and then. my husband and i were there recently and we looked through some of the records. that where milker and martha are buried. when we started reading the records of the church, these were faithful believers, people with a genuine faith in jesus christ. this was not some happenstance faith. this was not religion. this was not tradition. this was a real faith borne out by real people experiencing perilous times. and here in jericho, iowa, everything was about the church. as we went through the various generations of our own family -- my parents were very faithful. i was born in waterloo. they took us to the same church bring up and we sat each week in the same pew. my grandmother taught bible study there. but when we grew up, i know without a shadow of a doubt in our lutheran church that the gospel was preached from the pulpit. i have no doubt it was breached. but i have to confess to you that i did not understand it. we would go to sunday school in the morning and we have our bibles and i would take -- my bible with and it just did not make any sense to me. there was a vital part of the week. life went on. my father got a job in honeywell in minneapolis. about a year after we moved up to minnesota, my parents unfortunately got a divorce. there were the first in my family to have a divorce. it happens to millions of people, but it was the first in our family. it was shocking to people. we immediately almost overnight when to below poverty. my father had left my mother had been a full-time homemaker. it was myself and my three brothers. i want you to know god has a tremendous sense of humor. there is no place that is better preparation for politics than for a girl to grow up with three brothers. you learn how to defend yourself very quickly. my mother had to sell everything in our home. then we move to a tiny apartment in the city. and one thing i want to say -- is in god amazingly wonderful how he will often used challenges in your life and he will brilliantly disguised them as the opportunity for the greatest growth we could ever have and also as a pathway to come to him? there were difficult times and my mother had tremendous faith and she said, hold on. we are going to be fine. with our faith in god we will stick together as a family and we will make this. and when i say this, i mean no condemnation on any individual what i say this, but my mother said this to us -- she said, no one in my family has ever gone on public assistance and we will not do it either. and we did not. we did not have hardly anything, but we got jobs. i got a job babysitting. i was making 50 cents an hour. that was big money back then. i learned very quickly to be a saber, just like our entire family did because we were determined we were not going to spend more money than what we came in -- that what came in. and my mother made $148 a year. my brother scott paper routes. -- my brothers got paper routes. my mother always said to be grateful you are from iowa. by what is the breadbasket of the world. and it is true. -- by what is the breadbasket of the world. and it is true. this is such a tremendous stake for feeding people. when we were going through hard times, we held together as a family. if we held together with our faith, but i'd still did not have a living, alive faith. when i was 16 years of age, i had joined every activity there was in school. i loved school and i love being in all the activities. one of the things there was to do was a prayer meeting before school. i went to the prayer meeting and my friends discovered something i did not know. they discovered i did not really know the lord. even though i went to the prayer meeting, they could send in my spirit that i did not truly know him. he was not true the lord of my life. even though i was a nice person, i did not drink, i did not draw, -- did not smoke, i did not do drugs, i was not chasing wrong with boys. but it did not matter. i still had a wicked heart. i still needed to be saved and damany to jesus christ, but i had not done it at that point -- and bow my knee to jesus christ, but i have not done it at that point. and i had some faithful friends. i heard the way of salvation from the pulpit. and i heard it, and i did not give my life to the lord at the moment. but it stuck with me. later on i was with three friends of mine and it was this time of year. it was beautiful out. we heard there was going to be a party in our lutheran church on halloween evening. if we decided we would go. we were 16 years of all and end of horsing around and decided we would go to this party. we went, my friends and myself. there was no party of the church, about 10:00 at night, but the doors were open. that was not often the case. we went into the church and when we went in, it was almost like there was a wholly hush that came over the room. -- a holy hushed that came over the room. we were drawn to the altar. at that moment, a horsing around was done. all of us have a tug and our hearts that this was the time for serious business. we came up to the altar and we bowed our knees to the altar and which started talking to god. at that moment, the holy spirit was very powerful. we were there before a holy god. there was no one there, no pastor of in the church. each one of us began to confess our sins to the lord. we started to tear up because we removed emotionally that we were sinners before god -- we were removed emotionally that we were centers before god. as we support our hearts out and confessed our sins and we repented, which means to turn away 180 degrees from the former life, something absolutely remarkable happened. tears of joy came down our cheeks. for me, i can tell you it was a wonderful, free and experience i had never felt before. we walked back to our apartment and our lives have been changed. we still have our challenging lives, but that night by daud -- i bowed before my bed and all i knew is that i was a new person. the scripture says, behold, we are in the creation when we come to christ. that is what i felt. i said, lord, i don't know what happened, but i do know this. i will radically abandon my life to you and i give it to you and ask you to come in and make a whole and i will follow you wherever this will lead. after that, i began reading the bible and someone gave me a copy of the living bible. i have never had a copy of the living bible before and i began reading it and i could not get enough of it. it was as if they fail had been lifted from my eyes. if the word of god was alive to me. i had an appetite and a hunger for the word of god i had never had before. i started to set my alarm, as a 16 year-old, at 5:00 a.m. i got up at 5:00 a.m. so i could spend a solid hour reading the word of god before going to school. and i was reading limitations, jeremiah, second chronicles. i could not get enough. it was as if the board was just filling meet with his word. it was -- it was as if the lord was just filling me with his word. we had a dull said to us under their wings and started to teach us. -- adults, that took us under their wings and started to teach us. this was in 1972. and things started to change. we did not suddenly get out of poverty. life was still challenging. i worked my way through college. i went from working at a restaurant to driving a school bus to supervising kids at lunch. i did every job i could think of to work my way through college. i worked my way through law school. god brought me a wonderful, got the man who also gave his life when he was 16. my husband was also a farmer and his grandmother had a kg on the television and keep -- had billy kurram on television and he also gave his life to the lord. and there was a film series by france's shaver called "how should we then now live" and in that film series talked about how jesus needs to be a part of every part of our life. at that time we were not even boyfriend and girlfriend. dr. schaefer said abortion was the watershed issue of our time. how people view that will determine how they view so many other issues. that struck a chord with us. my husband and i were a challenge. we wanted to do more than just talk the talk. we wanted to walk the walk. we began reaching out to young women who were unwed mothers. we reached out to them to try to help them have solutions, to counsel them. we often offered to drive them, and drive them to pro-life centers. i went through childbirth causes with women who were on wed and about to have a baby. i held their hands as they gave birth. later we had some people in our church during foster care. the lord tug on my heart and asked us to consider foster care. it is the greatest experience of my life to bring 23 foster children into the home. god gave us 23 foster's children. my husband and i both thought this would be a wonderful opportunity. we had home schooled our children for a certain amount of time and then put them in private christian school. we believed we had to answer for how we raise our children. i am pleased to tell you that each of our five biological know the lord. they walk with the lord. they are wonderful kids. we have our five biological children and our 23 foster children. you are looking at the old woman in the shoe. it has been a great experience. there is so much more i can testify of the love of the board. when i was in the law school, that is when the lord gave me my life. i was praying one day and out of the blue, the lord gave me a first and i adopted it as a the first for my life. it is second corinthians, now the lord is that spirit, and where the spirit of the lord is, there is liberty. that has been my motivation throughout my life. the lord set me free. he set me free to serve him, to love life, to enjoy life, to pour myself into other people, to see the beautiful world he made, and to see what i could do to be a part of that world. he has shown us his glory. he has come to set the captives free. he is the author of liberty and in my life, i want to do whatever i can to be a part of bringing all liberty and freedom to people in any realm that i possum -- bringing liberty and freedom to people in any realm that i can. i worked as a federal tax litigation attorney. my husband and i started our own small business. we have been so blessed and so grateful to have walked with him all these years. the one thing i would say to anyone who is watching this over television or all of you who are here or by satellite is that ko'd is no -- god is no respecter of persons. he is not partial. what he would do for one, he would do for all. it is important for us to recognize, we were born in sin. that is what happened as the result of the fall of adam and eve. all of us have been born into sin. there is not one, not one, no matter what we have done in our life, whether we have murdered someone or committed some terrible act that we think we could never before given a four, there is absolutely nothing that any -- be forgiven for, there is absolutely nothing that any of us could have done that could move us away from god. he is so anxious to receive each one of us to himself. he died for everyone, men, women, all races, all ethnicities. he has died for us all to redeem us. that is all this book is. the scarlet thread of redemption goes from genesis to revelations. grateful for what jesus has done for me. i am so grateful that he saw fit to die for my sins, and i am grateful but my friends prayed for me and ultimately i was able to receive him. i thank you for allowing me to be here and warship you today at this wonderful church. [applause] >> thank you. can i ask you a few questions, and people are trying to get her, and she proved she knew more than anyone who is asking the questions. breyer has been taken out of schools, and that is when everything began going downhill. president roosevelt led the nation in prayer. if you have the opportunity as president, would that be something and now you would do, following the footsteps of him in that way? >> i think a president does not lose freedom of speech and expression and religious worship and liberty, and i would be pleased to do that. washington had a prayer for the nation during your washington swore to uphold the constitution, and his first act as president was to take the bible that he put his hand on, and the bible was open, and when it was over, president washington is the bible as the word of god, in recognition that this was a sacred trust being given to him. our nation does not have an established national church. that is what our founders did not want. they were right to stand for religious liberty. we do not demand people of this country warship out a certain church, but also, if you look at the first amendment, government should not prohibit religious speech and expression, particularly in the public square. that is why you have the first amendment, because congress is not to establish a law against the free expression of religious worship, and i think it is time that people stand for our states, because that is one of our freedoms that our founders lead and died for to give to us. >> i am going to talk about but all little later, but even as recently as fdr, it has been done. how would you support israel, and how important is it said euan think we support israel? >> i think it is vital, and i am very concerned about those actions. the day after i graduated high school, i went there, and i believe it is very important that we stand up for our allies and israel. 11 minutes after israel declared sovereignty, a democrat president recognize israel and her sovereignty. that was the greatest assistance israel could have had, to have the proceeds of the united states behind israel. >> i think it is vital that we support israel. i have been concerned about the actions of the current president. this is not a political speech. i have been concerned about those actions. the day after i read with high- school i went to israel and i spent a summer working on a kibutz. i believe it is important that we stand up for our ally, israel. it is very dangerous that for the first time since israel declared her sovereignty, 11 minutes after israel declared her sovereignty, a democrat president, harry truman, recognize israel and her sovereignty. that was the greatest help that israel could have had, to have the prestige and the power of the united states behind israel. when we put it daylight between the netted states and israel, that raises hostility -- between the netted states and israel, that raises hostility. i think it is important that our nation stand with israel. there is no other friend like israel. we benefit by that friendship and israel benefits as well. we are blessed as a nation. we are blessed as a nation when we bless israel. we need to be praying for the peace of jerusalem. >>