My husband Matt and I recently celebrated 30 years of marriage and ministry together, 18 of those years have been living overseas as global workers. We first learned language and lived in West Africa for seven years, then moved to Hungary. Following a particularly dark season during our first term in Africa, I knew I needed soul healing but did not have the tools even after years of church ministry, Bible school and training, and decades of following Jesus. Through delving into spiritual formation and exploring practices and rhythms of grace, God lovingly met me and my soul was awakened in a new way to the love and care he offers.

I learned to engage in practices such as lectio divina and the prayer of examen that brought life and renewal of relationship to my dry soul. In essence I encountered my own heart, God’s heart and the hearts of others in deeper and transformational ways. It not only revitalized my walk with Jesus but changed me and my relationships foundationally. Not long after this intense season of healing, I realized this was what I wanted to do as a vocation- to walk with leaders in continued spiritual formation.

As we returned to West Africa, I pursued training in spiritual direction and eventually enrolled in Bethel Seminary’s Masters of Ministry degree with a concentration in Spiritual Formation. For several years after graduating, I taught spiritual formation and relational spirituality at Bethel Seminary. I loved walking with students who were in all sorts of ministries as they explored their own hearts, families of origin, and spiritual stories, in order to experience God’s love in transformational ways.

Now I am two years into my Doctor of Ministry degree at George Fox University in Leadership and Spiritual Formation. I am specifically researching walking alongside seasoned global workers in holistic care, working to produce resources and experiences for sustained spiritual and personal formation in the later midlife stage of life.

For years now, I have come alongside Jeanni Shepherd at The Budapest Garden House as we offer soul care to global workers by providing retreats, resources, and experiences specifically geared to care for the soul. I enjoy writing spiritual exercises and providing spiritual retreats and forums consisting of training in areas of spiritual formation for the global worker. I remember the healing God brought so vividly, and hope to expose other global workers to the same eye-opening and heart-softening experience and then walk with them as they ask new and deeper questions of their hearts and relationships.