For a large portion of my life, I struggled with finding my identity in relationships with people rather than as a daughter of my Lord and Savior. God has been teaching me about His deep love for me and has been showing me how He knows me deeply and intimately. I am fully known by my Heavenly Father (Psalm 139)”  -Emily Gaudian “Genesis 28:12 talks about a dream Jacob had. So I'm not impressed by Satan because I am a house of God with a ladder coming down from it that provides angelic activities in the moments needed. Better put, I am an...

How does one recognize when God shows up? God is always reaching down from heaven to hold us, but sometimes we just can't feel His loving arms around us. Well, I discovered these past four days of training camp just how often God shows up in tangible ways. I just didn't recognize the signs before. My trip got off to a rocky start when my flight into Atlanta for training camp was delayed about three hours, making me late for the designated arrival time. As I waited in the airport, panic and anxiety set in. To pass the time, I read my Bible and daily devotional journal. The...

I find myself sitting in a goat terd infested field with an old man named Lokichar.  He is the grandfather of our translator Samuel.  Samuel explains to the five of us that he has told his grandfather about Jesus many times, but he just wont except him into his heart. He knows that Jesus is good and true, but he is just waiting on what I did not know, but by the looks of him he didn't have much time left to be messing around with.  So we start to pray and ask Lokichar what he is waiting on. I look into his old eyes and see the many years of hard labor staring back at...

The last 4 days have probably been 4 of the most unocomfortable  in my life. Walking into camp and being told to pick only 3  things to use for the next 12 hours: uncomfortable. Sleeping outside on a tarp in a lean to that my team built: uncomfortable. Worshipping in a building without air conditioning: uncomfortable. Being completely open and vulnerable with a team of people I just met on Friday: uncomfortable. And yet the excitement is building! God has taught me so much about myself, about team building, and mostly about learning how to be completely open and flexible! he...

There is a lyric from a song that you might know…”What if God was one of us?”  I already know the answer to that question because it is really not a question at all.  God was one of us, in the form of Jesus, God came down from heaven and spent time here on Earth as a human.  This past week, we celebrated the day of Jesus crucifixion (Good Friday) and the day of His resurrection (Easter)…we don’t need to question whether God was one of us because He was…history attests to the fact that there was really a person named Jesus who lived in...

A wicked cycle holds Busia dearly, a cycle in which all arrows point to death, disease, and poverty. Within time the streets have developed themselves into chains, leaving people to drown in sin. A lack of respect boils over behind the eyes of each man along the street. The city has become swallowed by this cycle…the cycle of lust. Almost every girl knows that feeling of pure violation when a man stares into her body for his own impure pleasures; however Busia significantly multiplies that feeling. A stronghold of sex and lust truly hovers over the city, the kind of stronghold you...