“Home - I was home!”
That’s all that I could think of as I made my way to the Lighthouse Prayer Meeting on Sunday, June 25th, 2023. I was going to make my Underway Commitment, and I was just so happy to have found my home back with the People of Hope community.
Growing up, with my parents and my grandparents in the community, I always sensed there was something special about it - even if I didn’t fully understand why we had to sing so much, or have Lord’s Day every week, or socialize so often. It wasn’t until I was older, in college and beyond, that I realized just how special the community is - a place filled with community life and support of one another, a place where one is constantly invited to go deeper in relationship with the Lord, and a place where one can freely and joyfully live out a life filled with Holy Spirit, surrounded by and called on by others just as Spirit-filled. That is a place where I can feel home.
I am grateful for the People of Hope, for its faithfulness to Christ and His Church, for its witness of God’s love
Working at Koinonia Academy, I am constantly reminded of how grateful I am to have had something like KA and the community supporting both me, and my parents, in our faith journeys. I am grateful for Camp Hope, where I remember hearing the Lord call me to a personal, deeper relationship with Him for the first time. I am grateful for the Brotherhood of Hope, who pushed me and encouraged me to deepen my faith even further all throughout college and the four years beyond in service with them at their college campuses. They helped me understand more fully who the Holy Spirit is and the freedom found in living life with Him, and they showed me what it means to be a true disciple on mission. I am grateful for my family - for my grandparents, Lolo in heaven and Lola here on earth, for being one of the first members of the People of Hope and for standing by it so faithfully, and for my parents, for choosing to live and raise their family in the People of Hope and for living their lives as witnesses of God’s love.
I am just grateful. I am grateful for the People of Hope, for its faithfulness to Christ and His Church, for its witness of God’s love - most fully found in a personal relationship with our Lord through life in the Holy Spirit, and for its acceptance of me to be a part of it! I am happy to be home.
- Maria, Lighthouse Member