I remember it like it was yesterday even though 1990 was over 30 years ago. A group of young InterVarsity students hopped off the plane in Illinois with our suitcases ready for the Christmas break tradition of Urbana. We wheeled our suitcases through 3 inches of snow to our dorm rooms and prepared for the opening session. The next day I signed up for a session about prayer and it sparked in me a passion for prayer that has followed me through many different seasons of life. I made a commitment to pray through my notecard list of people in my life, to pray for the world, the government, missions, and more. A small group of us met daily during college to lift up our friends, family and missionaries we knew. Jump forward a few years and I found myself boarding a plane that was headed a lot farther away than Illinois. On my first missionary journey to Ukraine, I met many men and women of prayer who influenced my daily prayer life. One lovely lady who had been a missionary for most
When I accepted a position as a principal 9 years ago, I became the person who knew and carried around the hurts, anxieties, trauma, losses, and dysfunction of all those children and adults. The only way I knew to deal with all of that heavy burden was to lay it at Jesus' feet. I came morning after morning and petitioned God to care for each of these precious people with greater compassion and mercy than even I could imagine. So, that's how I became a praying principal.