After recommitting my life to Jesus at the age of 21 I finally answered the hunger for the nations that had been burning deep within my soul for most of my life. I didn't even fully understand what it meant to give my life to Jesus at this point, let alone serve Him across the nations, yet I went out on my first short term mission trip a few months later. My mum had invited me along. Upon receiving her invitation...instant travail. I cried for hours uncontrollably. When she asked what was wrong I told her that I wasn't ready to leave my friends and my life to go live in Kenya but I loved them so much. She was very confused by this response: I was only being invited on a short two week trip. I'd never even been to Africa before. Little did she know what would come later.

 

At this time, I wasn't even walking with the Lord well myself. But, my mum and her bible camp team were pretty gracious in bringing me along anyway. I had so many unhealthy habits and addictions the Lord was slowly setting me free from. For some people, freedom from addiction is instant. A date they remember when they got sober. For me it was more of a slow. gradual journey of transformation. It was on my second trip to Kenya a year later that God led me to the street family community. I had still not fully surrendered so many things from my old life to the Lord. Since my first trip to East Africa the year before I had come home and continued living my life whatever way I pleased Monday to Saturday and attended church on a Sunday morning. If I'm honest a lot of the time spent in Sunday morning services I was still drunk or high. I felt very out of place in Christian environments but I loved Jesus and was hungry to learn more.

 

On the next  trip I was led to a group of street boys gambling on the roadside out of their minds on drugs. Totally unplanned by those I was with but totally a divine appointment from God. For the first time in a long time, I instantly felt home. Everyone around me including passers by were afraid of these boys. They warned me of how I'd be robbed or hurt and not to go near them. In my mind, those saying this were all crazy. They were teenagers and kids! This was the most comfortable and relaxed I'd felt the whole trip. Drunk and high on the roadsides, misunderstood, involved in crime instead of in school, they were a picture of myself. Eight years of rebellion, addiction and living my life in dark, dangerous environments had made me hard. I don't think anything could of scared me at this point. From this day I made any excuse I could to get into town and spend time with them. We'd play cards and gamble on the street, they'd help me find places to buy cigarettes and show me where to hide to have a smoke. At this time I didn't really see the spiritual need for them going deep in a relationship Jesus and I focused on their earthly needs. I knew Jesus could help them physically and materially and was very focused on getting them out of the streets and out of physical suffering.

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After coming back from this trip I was worshiping the Lord in all of my broken imperfectness. It was a Sunday night and we were praying for missions after a praise and worship service. Naturally, I was into it praying for the people in Kenya who I'd come to know and love. The Holy Spirit broke out. Groups of us were at the front of the church, some on our knees, some dancing. I was praying, crying out, holding hands with a few older ladies my granny's age, one of them a retired missionary, then I felt a shift in my spirit. The Holy Spirit broke into my life like a blinding light. I was consumed by fire for the nations and very quickly fell deeply in love with the Lord from this point. I started to love the things He loves and hate the things He hates. My spirit would rub up the wrong way when I would try to go out to nightclubs or bars and I really began to despise being in those environments. I would get really ill if I drank alcohol and although I took drugs several times after this I cried with conviction. I'd sit in council estate front lawns with everyone around me drunk and talk about Jesus; my friends would get so annoyed.

 

I would encourage them to join me in church but they weren't into it and didn't really like how I was changing. This was a very painful time for me. When your in the lifestyle I was in, your friends are like your family. You stay with each other in different houses almost each night. We had been a family of friends for ten years. You go through some very serious situations together in dark places. If it was up to me I don't know if I would have been able to let them go. So the Lord stepped in and took them away. One of them stays in touch and remains a close friend who I will love and pray for until the end of my days. The others decided that they didn't like the new person I was, the way I acted and the lifestyle changes I'd made. So with a lot of heartache we went our separate ways. It was one of the hardest things I've been through in my life. Even now after being out of contact for years, they still feel like family to me and I don't think I'll ever stop praying for them or loving them. It was at this point that the Lord gave me the verse, "A Father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families; He sets the prisoners free and gives them joy." (Psalm 68:5-6)

 

I knew I had to go back to the streets of Kenya in search of what the Lord wanted me to do with the street family community. I thought this verse was an encouragement for me after losing my 'family' when I lost my friends after following Jesus. The street community felt like my new family, and in a way they would be. I felt grittier than other Christians and missionaries and so I felt so alone in that world, but the street youth understood me and I understood them, My friendship and slow, steady walk shoulder to shoulder with them provided a gentle transition to missions that the Lord new I needed. Without us even needing words, we got each other. As I grew in faith though, I came to realise this verse (Psalm 68:5-6) wasn't for me at all. It was prophetically linked to what the Lord wanted to do in the street community we were working with. I finally stopped running away from Jesus and told Him, wherever you want me to go I'll go and whatever you want me to do I'll do. 

 

So back I went to Kenya again, this time to three different areas of the country to different ministries and different groups of street children. God quickly brought me back to the initial group I'd met and been supporting since my first visits to Isiolo. We'd spend our days walking the town together as they showed me the verandas they slept on, the drug bases and illegal brewery dens. With my understanding of drugs, my cigarette in hand and my 'don't care', cheeky demeanour, I wasn't appearing to be a regular foreign white lady at this point. This allowed me a certain level of inside access to the gang bases where I was able to see first hand everything that was going on. Street leaders trusted me and didn't think I was going to take away the younger kids they were using to sell drugs. It was at this point that we really grew together. Sitting on the street corners and beside prayer rooms struggling to make sense of scripture together. These first days with this first group of boys where some of my sweetest. As I continued to grow in relationship with the Lord and in fellowship with the Holy Spirit, I myself was able to heal from a lot of unhealthy habits and addictions used to cope with challenges and hurts I'd dealt with in my own life and family. For the first time in my life I really learned what it meant to abide in Christ as a true disciple. I got a taste of his presence and I wasn't prepared to let it slip away.

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Before Jesus returns as is prophesied in scripture, God's chosen people Israel, will turn back to each other first and then towards Him. Families will be restored to what Jesus intended them to be. Fathers will lead their wives and children caring for them gently. They will point them toward Jesus joyfully and in love.  Tending for them and serving them like a gardener cares for his precious garden. They will gather around the table of fellowship with each other again and all the families from their individual places of devotion to one another and to God will then join together as the church in corporate worship and adoration of the Lord. But, before it happens in Israel it must happen across the nations of the world. It is when they see the Gentiles not only in intimate relationships with Jesus but in intimate relationships with each other and with Jesus as a unit that they really become jealous. Through this reconciliation and redemption of family to go back to what the Lord had first intended family to look like, Israel desires it for themselves. The prophesy written in Malachi 4:6 'And He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers' is the call on our heart and the scripture that the Lord gave us both regarding our contribution to the great commission.

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Since the Holy Spirit got me back in the Sunday night Praise service, this fire for relationship with the Lord, intersession and deliverance ministry has really burned inside of me. My passion is leading children and parents to the feet of Jesus. I love teaching them all the Lord has for them, guiding them to go deeper as they grow in prayer, discipleship, meditating on the Word, the gifts of the Holy Spirit and evangelism. Everything we do as disciples should stem from a place of prayer and bloom in a place of sharing the transformative Gospel of Christ with others. Find the young child trapped deepest in crime, entangled most in addiction. The one who everyone says they can't help. Bring him to me and I will walk the road to the Lord with him. That is the one the Lord is sending me after. Find the parent who think they've lost their child forever. The drunk mama who everyone has lost hope in; I want to sit with her. Revealing Christ to the broken by teaching them how to develop a relationship with Jesus for themselves is my desire. I enjoy getting to be a part of preparing these children spiritually to go back to their families as lights in the darkness and back out to disciple the street family community across the nations, provoking Israel to jealousy through the beauty of Christ centred family, in the name of the Lord.