A Little More About Us
Photography by Zeyn Afuang
Leah I am a country girl from Belleville, Pennsylvania, Born and loved into a beautiful family of five children and two amazing parents. My life has been a greenhouse of nurturing and God-seeds planted deep. I'm so thankful.
The year I graduated high school, God spoke to me clearly, and asked me if I was willing to give up everything to follow Him anywhere. I said yes. And so this journey of reckless abandonment to His hand and heart began. I am running after His heart, and sometimes tripping, and getting up to run some more. Several years ago, while standing on a crowded street in India, the stench of poverty and death thick around me, the sights of suffering too much to bear, I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut to all the brokenness, and see only good. God spoke to me in that moment of painful realization, that His eyes never turn away. His heart never hardens to the cries of these broken ones. Not for one moment since the beginning of time has He looked away from the suffering....the pain He feels eclipses a thousand times the pain I felt at that moment. His heart breaks, day in and day out, as He watches His people suffer injustice. That day I asked Him to break me for what breaks Him, and to never let my heart grow used to this pain. I asked Him to fill me, send me, and to use me up until He's done with me here. In 2004, God lead me to pursue a degree in Midwifery. It was the clinical practicum of my training that brought me to Manila, Philippines, and here I spent a year loving mamas and babies in the slums. I never suspected that God was writing a new chapter in this story, one that made this my home, my land, my people. He led me to my amazing husband, the one my soul loves, and hand-in-hand, this journey has become better together. The three children God has gifted us with have made this journey more rich, incredible, love-filled than I could have imagined. I love my family, music, strong coffee, dark chocolate, and things that make me laugh. I am passionate about worshiping God, fighting injustice, helping babies come into the world and loving their mamas, educating, empowering, and sharing hope with the hopeless. I have been liberated by God's lavish, redemptive, and often scandalous grace, and long to see others experience the same freedom. |
Francis
Our God is an awesome God! He took me, a lost man, into His Kingdom and made me more than the person I was. Now I have been blessed by Him more than anyone in this world could ever bless me.
I was born and raised in the cool mountains of Baguio City in the Philippines. An Igorot of the Applai tribe, I was ashamed of my roots and was not confident and filled with shame. After graduating from medical school, I felt a strong desire to stay in the Philippines to serve my fellow Filipinos. I could not see myself leaving the islands to serve in a foreign land. I became proud for having stayed serving my country while most of my colleagues left to work abroad. As a doctor, I did good things and took care of others, I took good care of myself, I was very well in health, I had enough to be able to feed myself three times daily, I had clothes to wear, and I always had a roof over my head to sleep under. However, I reached a plateau in my life and was not really sure of where I was heading. Success, good works, nationalism, good life... I was still empty. "Is there more in life?" I thought. I never knew I could be more than what I had already become. When I came to know Jesus, and the new life He offers, I became a new and transformed person. Before, I was like a piece of driftwood, being tossed back and forth - no direction... now, with my eyes opened, I have a purpose-driven life in God's Kingdom (which goes beyond the Philippines). I am truly free. I am growing to know Him more every day as I serve with His workers to bring hope and love and light to lands where many are still crawling in the darkness and not knowing which way to turn. I am blessed to be a blessing. My desire now is to keep sharing how life gets better every day with Jesus. I love being with my beautiful and wonderful wife, Leah, our awesome kids, hiking (mostly with the purpose of going to serve a tribal village at the end of the hike), fishing, hunting and surfing whenever I get the chance. I enjoy worshiping God with my guitar and ukelele. |
Photography by Zeyn Afuang
