Mary was a young teen living in the town of Nazareth, in the hills of Galilee. She came from an impoverished but honorable family. Her family was descendants of Israel’s King David. She was trained in the Scriptures and knew that God had promised to send the Messiah, who would rescue the people of Israel and become their king.

Every Jewish girl dreamed of being the mother of the Messiah. Mary loved God and wanted to serve him with all of her heart, but she was just a young girl from a humble family, with no great expectations that her life was going to be any different from her mother’s or from that of the other women in her town.