Raised in a missional family and shaped by years of ministry in the U.S., Europe, and Brazil, my life has always been intertwined with the call to know God and make Him known. After years of wrestling, searching, and rediscovering my faith for myself, God led me to YWAM Furnace and ultimately to the School of Biblical Studies. Now, I’m stepping into a new season of serving, discipling, and teaching in South Africa.
I was born into a missional family in Kansas City Missouri, where my parents were active in ministry after having spent a decade ministering in Europe. I grew up with ministry being everywhere, not just church on Sunday, but it was what my family's life was centered around, and that was life. And because of this lifestyle I had the privilege to travel internationally at a young age over the summers, but that didn’t last for long.
The summer of 2013 my parents and my two older sisters packed up our lives and moved to Florianopolis, Brazil with the goal of starting a church and prayer room. And the reality of leaving all that I had known and grown to love in the US was quickly slipping away in Brazil, and I didn’t like it. I had struggles with relationships, school, family, ect… Yes I learned Portuguese fluently and developed a worldview that many will never have the opportunity to have, but I couldn’t see that as a positive at that time as I felt the desire to be “normal”.
In 2019 our family moved back to the US and more specifically Colorado, and I quickly found that just living in the US wasn’t going to fill this hole on the inside I felt. I struggled quite a bit in Colorado, with our family then moving to Kansas City in 2021, where the struggle didn’t end. I had returned to the place I grew up expecting it to be the same as when I left but I learned that it had changed and more than that, I had changed. I ended up graduating high school in KC and found myself working as a server making good money but wanting to make more. I met with a real-estate agent wanting to discuss options for myself in real-estate, because the idea of 4 years of college sounded terrible and I knew you could make good money.
We ended up just talking about my life, and somewhere throughout this conversation he suggested I go to a DTS (Discipleship Training School) in New Zealand at YWAM Furnace in Tauranga. YWAM (Youth With a Mission) is a missions organization that trains and equips young people to be as effective as possible in carrying out the great commission, with it’s core values being: Know God and Make Him known. I had known about YWAM from my parent's 10 years working with them in Europe, as well as several friends who had gone to Kona to do their DTS. And honestly the idea of YWAM was never appealing to me, but for some reason when he suggested YWAM Furnace I felt a yes in my heart, and the yes was me knowing that this would be the opportunity for me to find my own relationship with the Lord, and not just know who God was based on the experience of others or the community around me, but know who God was from my personal experience.
YWAM Furnace taught me some key foundational pillars to my faith that sparked a real relationship with God in my life. It gave me a greater hunger in my heart to know God and to make him known. I ended up doing a leadership school with YWAM Furnace and staffed a DTS with them leading a team to the Philippines. During this time of staffing, I grew a passion for the Bible choosing to spend much of my off time reading the word. I had also talked with many others and was thinking heavily about doing a SBS which is a bible school in YWAM. I was looking at different locations and talking to people when I met an outreach team in the Philippines from South Africa, and they told me they were running a SBS at their base the next year. And meeting them had reminded me that God had given me a word about South Africa during the send in Orlando in 2019. It was through these events that I felt peace about coming to South Africa for SBS.
SBS (School of Biblical Studies) is a 9 month long school teaching which teaches you to study the bible inductively, teaching you to interpret scripture accurately using its context. And this is done through reading each book 5 times. And this school has transformed me from the inside out. It has changed the way I pray, evangelize, do community, daily chores, seek God, etc… It’s been through this school that I have been able to learn so much more about God as the school teaches you how to find God’s character and nature in his word in context, but then also how to apply to our daily lives today.
The School of Biblical Studies is a nine-month Inductive Bible Study course within Youth with a Mission, University of the Nations. The SBS aims to equip students with the tools to study the scriptures. Through the process of study, they will begin to learn how to pass on the skills and knowledge they gain throughout the course as they submit to God.
I have now chosen to go and staff the next SBS in South Africa, and I couldn’t be more excited. I am planning to arrive in South Africa mid-January to go through about a 2-month leadership track, with the SBS starting at the end of March. While staffing, I will have the opportunity to teach several books of the Bible to the class, as well as having the privilege to walk alongside around 5 men in the SBS discipling them through the school. This is something that I am extremely passionate about as I see such a lack of biblical literacy amongst this generation and I’ve been there myself. But I’ve seen the real transformation in my life through SBS and can’t wait to walk alongside others guiding them through the process.
Would you please consider partnering with me in this next stage of my life?
Send me an email! I'd love to hear from you!