NEW YEAR, NEW ADVENTURES- THE STORY BEHIND YWAM!

Hello friends!!

Oh my goodness; this is happening! If you are here, then you know that I have officially announced that I am going to be attending YWAM’s (Youth With A Mission) Discipleship Training School (or DTS) this October! I am so excited for this new adventure with the Lord, and I would love to share the story behind the decision to attend this school!

Also, if you want more information about YWAM Kona, then click here!

For a long time, I had no clue what to do after high school! I didn't know if I wanted to go to college, and then what college I would go to or what to even study. Even thinking about it made me exhausted. What didn’t help, was that I wasn’t super passionate about any specific thing, except Jesus and the Bible. I thought about going into ministry, and got excited about the thought of it, but still hesitated. ‘Maybe, it would be better if I did go to a college,’ I thought. Still, even after praying about it, I just didn’t know.

So, I just surrendered it to the Lord. I surrendered it completely, totally let it go, and it was amazing! It felt like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders; just resting in knowing that my Dad’s got me, He’s taking care of me and I trust Him. And, I was really in no rush! I was ok with staying home for 4+ years after I graduated, and my parents weren't kicking me out of the house! (Ya’ll let’s be honest, the world is expensive so I wasn't eager to jump into those big bill paying days :) )

The Lord reminded me to trust Him completely, surrender it to Him, and then be faithful and obedient to wherever He calls me to, whatever He calls me to do. So I rested in Him, so much so that I hardly ever thought about it, except for when I would pray and the Lord would remind me to keep fixing my eyes on Him; trusting Him with every next step.

Then, senior year came along.

When I began my last year of grade school, that’s when I started to think about it more often. This was the year to start applying to colleges, if I were to attend one right after high school that is. I created a list of Christian Colleges to start praying about, but, I just didn’t feel peace about going to get a typical degree.

My best friend Ania told me about an organization called YWAM. It stands for Youth With A Mission, and their purpose is “to train you so you can go! To help you find God’s unique calling on your life, and then build your skills, character, and knowledge to bring revival and reformation to wherever God takes you!” (YWAM website) It sounded amazing, and I even had some friends go and had an incredible experience! Ania told me that they were having a youth summer camp; she was going with her family and thought I would want to go to! I did, not just to have an incredible week in Kona Hawaii, growing with the Lord and meeting amazing new people, but also to pray about attending their DTS school! I wanted to go in the space and pray about it; my family did that when we were deciding about moving to Utah. While we were on a trip in St. George, praying about moving, that is when the Lord gave us the green light!

During the spring, after I already decided to go to the summer camp, I actually had to read a lot of books about YWAM, or people who went to YWAM for school! Coincidence? Nope. No, that was the Lord. I thought it was super fun that I had to read those books, while I was praying about attending!

While we were in Kona, I already felt so much joy and peace. I felt at home on the YWAM Base, with the people and in the place. But, I wanted it to be 100% the Lord leading me to do the DTS. So during one of the morning worship sets, I asked the Lord:

“Lord, I need your clarity about attending YWAM DTS. Please tell me now, yes or no, do you want me to come here?” And I heard the Lord SO CLEARLY say:

“ELLA, THIS IS WHERE I WANT YOU TO BE.”

Immediately, I felt the weighted peace blanket come on me, and my spirit was jumping for joy. I knew in that moment, that I was going to attend a YWAM DTS school.

Now, the question was WHERE. What base in particular. There are YWAM Bases all over the world, and I didn't want to go to Hawaii just because it is Hawaii. And guess what? The next day, the YWAM camp was having a DTS interest meeting. Definitely NOT another coincidence; God is literally the best at what He does!

The next morning I was in the meeting, and getting so excited for what the Lord has next for me! During it though, they were talking a lot about their new base in Nashville Tennessee. Now, I totally understand why; it is a new base and they want to build up excitement so people want to come there. But, I felt no peace about going to Nashville. I didn’t know why, and I was honestly trying to convince myself to say yes to going there. But no matter what, I just felt no peace. I found out why on the last day of camp. We had a “Commission Night,” and on this night, the leaders call out places that the Lord put on there heart. Places where they feel like someone or multiple people in the congregation feels called to. When they called up America, oh you best believe my spirit started dancing! I’ve had such a burden on my heart for the people of America. Don’t get me wrong, I love the nations and we need people sharing the Gosepl to those people. But, we also can’t have everyone leaving America to go to the nations. We still need people here! And there are so many people in America who know of Jesus, but they don’t have a real and genuine relationship with Him. They don’t actually live for Him; many are living lukewarm! So that is why I feel such a burden for these people; and the reality is, we don’t need to travel to a different country in order to be a missionary. No our mission field starts in our backyard.

The reason I didn’t feel any peace about attending the base in Nashville, was because in the meeting they announced that Nashville is their “sending missions and missionaries to other nations base.” If I went to this base, I would be trained to go to other nations, while I feel called to the people of America. And so as I was praying more about which base the Lord wanted me to go to, I did feel so much peace about going to Kona. One of the biggest reasons is super cool, and it is just amazing how God puts all the pieces together.

If you don’t know, my family and I moved to St. George Utah to plant Hilltop Church. Utah is heavily populated with LDS or Mormons. If you don’t know a lot about Mormonism, I highly encourage you to watch this video. Mark Winger does an excellent job at explaining what Mormonism is and why it is very very different from Christianity (and why it is not Christianity at all).

Most of the state of Utah is Mormon, and the Lord called my entire family here to plant the church. Hawaii, is also heavily populated with Mormons! About 75,000 Hawaiians are Mormon; there is even BYU Hawaii, which is a Mormon College. There are only 3 BYU locations, in Utah, Idaho, and Hawaii. So why is it so perfect that the Lord called my entire family to Utah, to help show Mormons the real Jesus, to then call me to Hawaii, another state which is so heavily populated with Mormons?! Oh I just love Jesus, He knows what He is doing!! And He does it so perfectly!

With that being said, I am going to attend YWAM’s DTS school, in Kona Hawaii, in October of 2025.

I am so excited for this new adventure with the Lord. I can’t wait to get trained and learn more about the Bible, apologetics, evangelism, theology, and then go and share the Good News with a team of people! I am excited to take you guys along with me on this journey! If you want to learn more about YWAM, and exactly what I will be doing there, then click these to learn more! If you want to follow along the journey and partner with me, then subscribe to my newsletter, follow me on Instagram, and click here to partner today! Thank you guys so much, I really appreciate all of you!

I love you guys so much, and Jesus loves you more! Stay tuned for more updates!