Susannah Miles was in her first semester of college when a professor asked her what she wanted to be.

“I couldn’t think of anything except I want to be a momma,” Miles told a crowd at the annual Sav-a-life annual banquet and auction Friday night. “Apparently God heard me and about three weeks later I found out I was pregnant.”

Miles was joined on stage by her husband Cameron and their son Wilks. She told guests that it was Sav-a-life that changed the way she though about her pregnancy.

“I went to class and I was scared and upset,” Miles said. “I didn’t listen; I Googled how to tell your parents that you’re pregnant. Then I texted someone who had gone through this before and they told me to go to Sav-a-Life.”

Miles did not have a good perception of the organization back then – “I thought that was where you went to face the consequences of what you’d done,” she said. “I had a negative connotation.”

“I met a woman there who waited for the results of another pregnancy test with me, and when it showed positive, what she told me shifted my whole idea of my situation. She said ‘Congratulations.’”

It was a turning point and they decided to keep the baby, with Sav-a-life helping along the way.

It was a powerful message for the supporters of the organization. The dinner and auction is the center’s largest annual fundraiser. The funds go to a variety of services offered by the organization.

In 2018, the center performed 420 pregnancy tests, had 378 participants in Family Life Enrichment and Education classes, performed 40 ultrasounds in four months, presented 50 gospel presentations and had 16 professions of faith and re-dedications.

Featured speaker Elaine Brown of Park Memorial United Methodist said her adoption story was one of hope, keeping with the dinner’s theme “Discover hope,” but the hope was through someone else.

“(After years of battling infertility and four failed adoptions) … I lost hope. Little did I know hope was going into the heart of someone else,” Brown said.

Another woman was having a baby boy and she knew she could not keep it. That woman picked Brown and her husband, Kevin, to be the adoptive parents. The same woman would later choose the Browns again to become the parents of another boy.

“The story of hope is not mine, but a momma who stepped out in faith to let people she never met to raise her son in love,” Brown said.

Door pries were given away between speakers and a live auction was held to finish the event and raise more funds for the organization.