What a Year!
An update from Willow…
Wowie zowie! What a year it has been! As I sit at my desk on a dreary spring day, joining many in hoping for the sun to peek through, I feel overwhelmed by gratitude for all that God has done. As I peer back to the fall, our staff, board, and volunteers have poured out and seen God show up in incredible ways.
I recently heard from a few women who have been impacted by what God is doing around here. One woman reached out to say Collide “has, quite literally, saved another life. For that, I can only say THANK YOU for letting the Lord work through you to touch the lives of so many people like me who were literally ‘walking dead’.”
I don’t know about you, but I want to live my life telling more stories like this. I want to see people who are living like they’re dying walk out of the tombs and truly live- live as Jesus promises in John 10- life to the full. What a gift it is to witness this life-changing transformation right before our very eyes!
Another woman came to her first Collide conference recently and wrote “I usually don’t go to things like this because of trust issues and being around people I don’t know due to being an abuse and domestic violence survivor…This (event) was life changing, and I am looking forward to the next one… Thank you so much, I could just hug you!”
A woman who volunteered with us this entire last year shared about her experience, ”I LOVED being involved in every part of it. This last conference I had the opportunity to embrace so many women who were filled with emotion when giving out bracelets. It enforced and showed me how impactful and important it is to show up for them.”
Since the fall we have hosted, crafted, and curated several retreats, classes, conferences, podcasts, Bible studies, online resources and more in the hopes women would collide with Jesus and they have! We have sat with hurting and broken women and pointed them to Jesus and invited them to get help and healing in our counseling program. Every single story, every single life, every single collision has been an honor and a privilege.
We are already running getting ready for a big year ahead! We are launching in a new city which is incredibly huge and we can’t wait to see what God does as we follow this vision He set in our hearts years ago. Please be praying as we show up to Portland, Oregon, in February 2025! I also just finished a book and we are working toward plans to launch that as well. We have so many plans in store for the year to come and over and over again, we keep seeing God show up and do beautiful, beyond what we could ever imagine, types of things. Thank you for your prayers, your generosity, your cheerleading, all of it.
We have a big vision and we need people like you with BIG hearts to help us turn it into BIG impact.
