My Okie girl...

Priscilla--my Okie girl!

During the summers of 2009 and 2008, I had the joy of working with middle school and high school youth at Muskogee Church of Christ in Muskogee, Oklahoma. As I pause to remember that ministry, I can see how God used that experience to enlarge my heart for His children. It was in Oklahoma that He really helped me to understand how investing in youth brought me great joy. Serving at the church certainly opened the door for me to come to Germany and I am so grateful. While it was difficult for me to leave Oklahoma, God reallyblessed me with a piece of Oklahoma through the life of one precious little girl named Priscilla. She is my Okie girl :) Let me tell you about her...

Priscilla was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and has been a student at BFA for the past two and half years. Her parents are missionaries with Jews for Jesus and they have powerful testimonies about how God drew them to Himself and the mission field. They both speak Hebrew and are incredibly passionate about helping Jews see the reality of who Christ was, is, and forever will be. Priscilla's dad spoke at our dorm devotional this past Sunday and explained that Jesus' name in Hebrew is Yeshua, meaning 'salvation.' At the time of Jesus' birth, parents named their children according to who their child was...for Mary and Joseph to name their child Jesus/God/Yeshua would have been considered blasphemy, and yet it was true. This baby Jesus was and is God and He was and is salvation. God became Yeshua in order that we could live! I found this message so insightful as the advent season has begun and as we anticipate the arrival of Christ.

Okay, back to Priscilla...

Priscilla is now in 8th grade and she is the President of the BFA Middle School Student Council. She is extremely disicplined in her studies and she is extremely competitive in her sports. I love seeing her play basketball in the driveway with her dorm brothers--she is super tough and it's easy to see that the guys respect her game. Priscilla also has such an energetic and enthusiastic spirit--it's contagious really...it starts at 7:30 in the morning and ends around 10 at night! Sometimes I have to remind her to watch her 'volume' and it's really funny because she can usually anticipate when I am about to mention this ...she just laughs and gives me that beautiful grin that you see in the photo above. Ah, I love her!

Together, we love to reminisce about our time in Oklahoma--the friends we have there and the places that we've visted. It's so wonderful to connect to Priscilla in this way and to share about the place that means so much to us. We are both planning a visit there over Christmas break...unfortunately, we won't be crossing paths this time.