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What happens when everything you've built suddenly crumbles? For Lena, the collapse of her successful internet marketing business and the end of her marriage became the catalyst for extraordinary spiritual transformation. Her story reveals how God redirects our paths when we least expect it.
From dreaming of Hollywood stardom as a girl in Arctic Norway to becoming a top-producing internet marketer, Lena had achieved what looked like success. Yet beneath the accolades and material comfort, she recognized a spiritual emptiness—her relationship with God had become secondary to her ambitions. When her business unexpectedly collapsed in 2013, everything changed.
Today, Lena leads community outreach at her Los Angeles church while traveling to maximum security prisons in Mexico, providing eyeglasses and sharing the gospel with inmates who find profound joy despite their circumstances. Her approach to sharing faith is refreshingly practical—focusing on "seed sowing" rather than pressure, helping people move just one step closer to God through authentic conversation.
Perhaps most powerfully, Lena shares the life-altering experience of helping her severely autistic stepson recover from a debilitating swallowing disorder that nearly claimed his life. For nine months, she and her husband quit their jobs to spoon-feed him 12 hours daily, witnessing a miraculous recovery that culminated symbolically on Easter Sunday when he took his first bite of solid food.
Through these crucibles, Lena discovered a formula for unshakable joy: Jesus first, Others second, Yourself third. Her upcoming book explores living the abundant Christian life Jesus promised—finding peace, purpose, and strength regardless of external circumstances.
Ready to discover your unique spiritual gifts and calling? Visit shelivesabundantly.com for Lena's resources and join her journey toward purposeful Christian living. What unexpected detour might become your divine destination?
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Chapters
00:44 - Introducing Lena's Journey
04:31 - From Acting to Marketing to Ministry
12:58 - Prison Ministry in Mexico
18:52 - Ministering to Women
21:55 - How to Share Your Faith Naturally
32:19 - Finding Joy Through Hardship
42:24 - The Abundant Christian Life
47:26 - Discovering Your Unique Purpose
Transcript
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Free audio post production by Alphoniccom.
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Top internet marketing producer and multiple award-winning marketeer, she transitioned to Christian speaking and ministry.
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She runs an inspirational blog and is working on a Christian book.
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As the director of Evangelism Outreach at her Los Angeles church, lena teaches in-person evangelism classes and leads an outreach ministry.
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She also belongs to a prison ministry that travels to maximum security prisons in Mexico to share God's love with inmates.
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She is married to Don Lena's bonus mom to his three sons.
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One son, with severe autism, nearly died from a swallowing disorder a few years ago from a swallowing disorder a few years ago, deeply impacting Lena's resolve to live intentionally for the Lord.
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Lena, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
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Sure thing.
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I'm so excited.
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Thank you for having me.
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It's an honor, absolutely.
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As I always ask my guests, I always open with an icebreaker question, and today's icebreaker question is what's your favorite book and why does it resonate with you?
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no-transcript and enjoy the Christian life and not just be so stressed out all the time.
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So this particular book that I was telling this person about is called Growing Slow and is written by a wonderful woman by the name of Jennifer Dukes Lee and she talks about what it looks like to trust God's purpose or trust God's process rather well, purpose and process and just kind of allow yourself to to do things a little slow, not like super slow, but, you know, not rushing and stressing through life and not feel like you always have deadlines to meet, and you know just, uh, just kind of take things a little bit slower and the rewards that you reap from that.
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It's a really great book.
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It's just very well written and it greatly impacted my life and just helped me see that I was, you know, definitely one of those people that stress too much and try to you know.
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Just, you know you always feel like there's so many things to do, right, and you just can't keep up with everything.
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So that's the book that gives you a good perspective.
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So that would probably be the one, yeah, okay, how did you go from a content creator to speaking about God?
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Wow, you know how can I answer that question in a nutshell?
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And you, don't have to answer in a nutshell, you can give the long version of it.
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Okay, sure, well, you know, I've always kind of had an entrepreneurial spirit and always been very creative, very artistic.
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You know, I'm actually from the country of Norway, hence the accent, and I grew up in the way up in the north of Norway, above the Arctic Circle.
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And you know, even as a little girl, I love to create and teach and just, you know, anything that I could do to just express myself creatively or artistically, I would do it.
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And I had this dream about becoming an actress.
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I wanted to move to California as soon as I was old enough, because, you know, that little hometown that I grew up in, my hometown in the north of Norway, was very, you know, very quiet nothing ever really happened there Beautiful, but you know, I thought boring and I wanted to get out and explore the world.
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And actually, when I was 12 years old, I told my grandma that I wanted to move to California as soon as I was old enough to become an actress.
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And I remember she, you know she looked at me and she just she's.
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I remember her exact words.
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She said why do you want to move to America?
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It's so dangerous there.
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So of course she had never been outside the borders of Norway.
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But long story short.
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You know, when I was old enough I think I was about 22, I moved to California and, yeah, I didn't listen to my grandma, I wanted to do my own thing.
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So I moved to California, to Los Angeles more specifically, and I doubled in acting for a while.
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I graduated from college with a degree in theater and then I guess you could say that's when I officially became a content creator, because you were asking about, specifically, content creation.
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So then I became a content creator.
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After that, in the context of being a internet marketer, I decided I was going to, you know, move away from acting and start my online business.
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I wanted to see if I could figure out how to make money online and after some trial and error, yeah, I got started with an internet marketing company and I would market coaching packages, informational products, conferences, and I became very good at it and started training others to do the same, and I became the top female producer actually with that company, very successful.
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I felt like I was on top of the world.
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But I didn't realize it at that time, Dorsey.
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I realized it later, looking back, that I drifted away from God in the process.
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Now I became a Christian shortly after coming to California.
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The year after I came to California I arrived in the summer of 1995.
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So it's going to be 30 years next year, 30 years since I came to California.
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The following year I gave my.
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I came to California.
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The following year.
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I gave my life to the Lord.
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I became a Christian.
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It was very difficult to be a Christian in Hollywood.
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A lot of temptations in the film industry, a lot of just, mostly just expectations from people to compromise your convictions, to being willing to do whatever it took, you know, just to achieve fame and fortune.
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So that was one of the reasons.
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You know just kind of backtracking a little bit, that was one of the reasons why I felt that God was calling me to move out of the acting world and do something different.
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And that was when I started looking at ways that I could build an online business, learn to market online.
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It became very successful and, yeah, I trained other people to market, spoke at events around the country, even around the world, and coached clients and received many awards.
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And yeah, it was like I felt like I really made it.
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You know, all my dreams had come true.
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I finally made something of myself.
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All my dreams had come true.
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I finally made something of myself, but what I was getting at was that I didn't see it at the time was that I had become very lukewarm in my faith, which is the same know also part of the reason he showed me I needed to walk away from it, to put him back on that as number one in my life.
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And the same thing happening with marketing.
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As I became very successful and was making really good money and traveling and bought my dream home and, by the way, I was also married at the time.
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As I was experiencing all this success, my relationship with God suffered.
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I became very obsessed with my business, just as I had been with acting.
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I became very obsessed with success.
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I became very materialistic and prideful success.
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I became very materialistic and prideful and again God was speaking to my heart about getting my priorities straight.
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He was very clearly speaking to me about how he wasn't number one in my life anymore.
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And then, in an unexpected turn of events, the company that I represented it was a direct sales company that I marketed for it suddenly collapsed Unexpectedly, practically overnight.
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It was just the biggest shock and, as a result, I lost almost all my customers and clients and income sources, and this was in 2013.
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And you know, in the midst of it all, I actually I lost my marriage, so I went through a divorce, on top of losing my business.
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While I was in this very dark and difficult season, that's when God really started speaking to me in my heart about how I needed to stop allowing myself to get sidetracked and start using my gifts and passions for the kingdom.
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So that is when I started to really become convinced that this experience that I have create content, writing, teaching, speaking and so on I need to take this and start using it for God's glory.
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Not that you can't do that with marketing, but I wanted to more specifically focus on teaching women in the things of God and also get back to sharing my faith, because that is something that I was very passionate about as a new Christian.
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But as I became very obsessed with success, I kind of drifted away from that.
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It was no longer a priority for me to share my faith with people.
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I was just talking to people about marketing instead of you know Jesus.
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So I felt like that was something else that God was putting on my heart that you know.
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You need to get back to that.
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You know you need to get back to that.
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You know I gifted you in this area and I want you to use your gifts, you know, for me.
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So that is, you know kind of how that transition happened.
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I, you know, from being a yeah, an internet marketer, a content creator in the internet marketing world, you know, starting instead to create content, talks, written information, trainings, different types of content for, you know, christians and specifically women who are looking to grow in their relationship with the Lord.
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Yeah, I know that was a long answer, but you said I could just make it long.
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That's what I did.
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How did you get connected with the?
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You said in your bio and on your site you mentioned that you ministered to the prisons in Mexico.
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How did you get connected with that and what is that like?
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Yes, so in addition to the local outreach ministry that I lead at my church here in Los Angeles, I'm the director of evangelism outreach, so I teach and train people on how to share their faith and we have a program where we reach out to people in the community.
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We can maybe get back to that later if there's time.
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It's pretty extraordinary how God has used that program to actually double the size of our church in two years just from sharing God's love with the people in our community.
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It's just extraordinary.
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But so in addition to that, there's another ministry that is very close to my heart and that is a prison ministry, and that prison ministry is something that I got involved with.
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Let me see, I think it's probably about six years now that I've been part of that ministry, and that ministry I got connected through the church that I was attending at the time.
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I lived in a different part of LA at the time, so I had a different church not where I attend now who told me about this ministry and I was like, wow, that sounds fascinating, interesting and super scary.
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So let me try it out.
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I love new challenges and I love stepping outside of my comfort zone, and that was just another opportunity to try something new and see how it went, and of course, it was pretty intimidating.
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The first time it was quite a surreal experience to walk into a maximum security prison in the desert of Mexico.
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You know there's like nothing out there and you walk in and there's, you know, all these inmates with shackles on their hands and feet and tattoos.
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You know gang related tattoos all over their heads and faces and arms.
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And you know, and then we share the gospel with them.
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Sharing the gospel with these men.
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It's part of a vision ministry.
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We actually we do a vision test on the inmates ministry.
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We actually we do a vision test on the inmates.
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We are trained to do that to, you know, to test their eyesight, to see if they need glasses, which most of the men do.
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They don't really have access to eyeglasses.
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They have very little like.
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I mean, not even like the bare necessities.
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It's really it just gives you some perspective to go and see how these men live.
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It's like it teaches you to be grateful about little things.
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But yeah, so they don't have eyeglasses.
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Many of them need it.
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So we are trained to do vision tests on them and then we provide them with free eyeglasses and we use that little act of kindness to share the gospel with them, to talk to them about God's love, and they are so open.
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It is absolutely incredible that the openness that we are met by in these maximum security prisons.
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I'm going again in the middle of December and really looking forward to that because I haven't been able to go for a little while because of the local ministry that I lead and just obligations that I have with the kids here at home.
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But I'm really looking forward to going back and you know it just empowers you to see how God's at work in these prisons because I mean, people are getting saved right and left.
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This is a ministry that goes back.
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I think it's about two decades now, so long before I started.
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They go this ministry.
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I don't go every month but the ministry, this vision ministry, is called Into Focus Vision.
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The ministry group, the team, travels actually every single month to the prison.
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So you can imagine you know all these years of doing that and just you know God working through this team and to share the gospel with these men who have so much time you know to read.
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I mean we give them Bibles, of course, christian tracts.
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There are so many of these men that have gotten saved as a result of this ministry, working in the prisons now for two decades.
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And then these inmates go ahead and pass it on, so they share the gospel with other inmates and even with the guards.
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So the gospel is spreading like wildfire in these prisons and it's just extraordinary to see Wow, that's awesome.
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In these prisons and it's just extraordinary to see.
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Wow, that's awesome and yeah, I think it really strengthens you so much in your faith to see God do stuff like that in dark places, to shine His light in the dark corners and see men who are.
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You know, many of them are never going to get out.
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They are there for life but they have hope because they have Jesus.
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So you talk to them and you see that they have true joy.
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In spite of the hard, hard life that they lead and in spite of the fact that they are maybe never going to get out of that facility.
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They have a sense of purpose and joy and many of them get involved.
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They have in prison ministry, they have church in the prison, Some of the men sing, they have Bible studies.
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So it's amazing to see that you can be in such hopeless circumstances and still have hope, and these men do, the ones that have gotten to know the Lord.
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Why are you so passionate about ministering to women?
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Yes, you know that is a great question Ministering to women.
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Well, I think that as women, we really often we struggle to understand our identity in Jesus and feel that we are enough.
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You know, we just always wear so many hats.
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We're always needed somewhere.
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There's always, you know, something to do for someone right, and I feel that teaching women how they can grow in their relationship with the Lord is one of the most important things that I can do as a Christian woman myself.
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I feel that there is just really nothing more worthwhile.
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I feel that the experiences and gifts and passions that God has given me for speaking and teaching and writing, that I feel that he's expecting me to put them to good use and to not waste any more time chasing after things that really aren't important, eternally speaking, and that's what I did for many years of my life and so, yeah, so it just makes sense to help other women and I am passionate about it also because it's so meaningful.
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It fills my life with purpose, just like sharing the Lord, talking to people about Jesus, sharing the gospel same thing.
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It just gives me so much joy and satisfaction, so much joy and satisfaction, and to know that I am finally focusing on something that has eternal value and that, you know, maybe, you know, with God's help, I'm making a little bit of a difference.
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So, yeah, that's why I'm passionate about teaching women, helping them grow.
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You know, like I myself, you know, many years ago, when I was, you know, new in California, struggling to kind of, you know, find my place, didn't know many people, I was always well, I was a new Christian and I was always, you know, looking for resources and looking for, you know, like a strong Christian woman that I could follow and learn from.
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And I didn't really have it.
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Back then we didn't even have the internet, you know this was, you know, pre internet.
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So I know how important that is, you know, to have like a strong woman leader that you can follow and learn from.
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And I think that's what we're supposed to do with our experiences is to pass them on, you know, to others.
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And, yeah, you know to others and, yeah, you know, help others to make things a little easier for them by sharing what we have gone through, good or bad.
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How would you encourage someone, whether male or female, to you know tell others about seizures or witness to someone you know about seizures, but without becoming too pushy or too governmental?
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Yeah, you know, a lot of times we have kind of a fear about that.
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We think that we have to know all the Bible verses and know how to present the gospel, you know from beginning to end, and we think it's this scary you know scary experience and for sure it's going to go wrong and we're going to get rejected, and so we don't do it.
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You know we have these fears and I think that you know a lot of the time that's the enemy.
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He wants to put fears in our mind, make us think that it's so difficult and to keep us from doing it.
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And I like to look at myself not so much of an evangelist, as a seed sower, and this is what I always tell my team when we go out and do outreach.
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We have this program that we run that I mentioned earlier.
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Every Saturday morning we go out and talk with actually anywhere from 200 to 350 families that line up on the sidewalk outside of our church here in Downey, california every Saturday morning to receive food items from the church's food bank and what my outreach team and I do is that we go and strike up conversations with these families that are waiting in line.
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Some of them stand there for hours and we go on and talk with them while they're waiting in line for their food items from the food bank, and just chat with them.
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And so I have a team that I lead.
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We do this Saturday morning and, as we mentioned earlier, I also teach evangelism classes, and so what I always tell the attendees or my team members is that when you just look at yourself as a seed sower, it takes almost all the pressure off.
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If you picture a person being, you know, on the scale from like zero to 10, say, zero is the hardcore atheist, right, who just doesn't want to hear about God at all, completely closed.
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And then a person who said a 10 is the passionate Christian who sold out for the Lord and just loves Jesus, right.
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So if you picture the people you talk to being anywhere on the spectrum right from between a zero to a 10, okay, let's say a person is a number two.
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Don't feel pressure to try to take that person from two to 10.
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That's very, very unlikely that that's going to happen.
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Praise God if it happens, but don't expect it.
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Just focus on taking them one step closer to God.
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Maybe your task is just to take the person from a two to a three, or maybe from a seven to an eight.
00:24:19.988 --> 00:24:36.163
You know, a little bit closer to Jesus, help them open up a little bit more, because God uses a number of people a lot of the time to save someone and you know it's not up to us to save people anyway.
00:24:36.163 --> 00:24:38.446
You know we can't make it happen.
00:24:38.446 --> 00:24:40.470
That is God that saves people.
00:24:41.330 --> 00:24:55.534
So if you don't think so much about closing, you know, oh, I have to get them from zero to 10, from being a hardcore atheist to being sold out for the Lord, and get them to pray and receive Jesus.
00:24:55.534 --> 00:25:01.662
You know, if you don't think like that and you just think, okay, you know what I'm just going to love on them, I'm just going to.
00:25:01.662 --> 00:25:02.704
You know, listen to them.
00:25:02.704 --> 00:25:04.470
Listening is such a big part of it.
00:25:04.470 --> 00:25:22.815
You know, when you're willing to listen and people notice that you truly care about them, they open up and you start, you know, building that relationship, and then maybe you don't, maybe you don't even get to say that much the first time you talk, but next time now they're going to be like super open because you show that you were open to listen to them.
00:25:22.815 --> 00:25:27.508
So now, next time, they're going to be open to listen to you, right, sometimes it may take several conversations.
00:25:27.508 --> 00:25:45.152
So when you do that, when you're just willing to listen, show love and compassion and just focus on yeah, maybe just getting them a little bit closer to Jesus than they were before, then it's not very difficult at all.
00:25:45.880 --> 00:25:54.133
And you know, when I do trainings at my church, I also teach on how to go from the natural to the spiritual.
00:25:54.133 --> 00:25:55.154
That's a way to do it.
00:25:55.154 --> 00:26:07.788
It may sound complicated, or you know like if you've never done it before, or you know like if you've never done it before, but you basically it's a way that you can transition from talking about natural topics, which not natural would be anything that is not spiritual.
00:26:07.788 --> 00:26:11.191
Right, you transition from natural topics to spiritual topics.
00:26:11.191 --> 00:26:17.714
You don't usually walk up to somebody like you know a stranger and just start talking to them about Jesus right away.
00:26:17.714 --> 00:26:20.676
You know some people can do that and do a good job at it.
00:26:20.676 --> 00:26:22.218
That's not how I do it.
00:26:22.218 --> 00:26:27.962
That's not what I teach my team.
00:26:27.962 --> 00:26:29.509
I teach it more like it's just a natural part of the conversation.
00:26:29.548 --> 00:26:37.490
As you progress, you go from talking about natural that is, non-spiritual topics to talking about spiritual topics and it's just a natural part of, you know, of the conversation.
00:26:37.490 --> 00:26:56.682
It's really not difficult at all, and when you listen and you pay attention and you just kind of pray internally and like keep your spiritual antenna up, you know God will show you like, he will like steer the conversation in a way that, oh, wow, it seems natural to you know to talk about God here.
00:26:56.682 --> 00:27:00.391
So let me introduce the topic of God, for example.
00:27:00.391 --> 00:27:18.911
Just to give you a quick example, if I'm talking with somebody and they tell me, oh, I was, let's say, you know, I was raised in Mexico, okay, we're talking about just non-spiritual things and they tell me they're from Mexico and I'm like, aha, okay, now I can easily transition to a spiritual question.
00:27:19.833 --> 00:27:30.031
I go from asking them where they were raised the answer is Mexico to asking them what the main religion is in Mexico.
00:27:30.031 --> 00:27:31.894
Now I'm asking a spiritual question.
00:27:31.894 --> 00:27:34.065
I go from a natural question to a spiritual question.
00:27:34.065 --> 00:27:38.743
So I ask them yeah, is that or what is the main religion in Mexico?
00:27:38.743 --> 00:27:42.472
And they say, let's say they say Catholicism.
00:27:42.472 --> 00:27:46.926
Then I'll ask them the question oh, is that your background as well?
00:27:46.926 --> 00:27:48.070
Are you a Catholic?
00:27:48.070 --> 00:27:50.286
You see how easy that is.
00:27:50.286 --> 00:28:00.327
Now, suddenly we're talking about spiritual things and from there now, the door is wide open and it's not pushy at all.
00:28:00.327 --> 00:28:02.415
It's not pushy at all.
00:28:02.415 --> 00:28:04.605
It's not pushy at all.
00:28:04.605 --> 00:28:26.150
So, yeah, so that's what I tell people Just listen carefully, show compassion for people and just try to transition from the natural to the spiritual as God leads, and don't think too much about the outcome of the conversation.
00:28:26.150 --> 00:28:28.006
You know, just sow those seeds.
00:28:28.380 --> 00:28:38.449
So that's kind of the bottom line I would say when you were talking about you know the growth and going you know from like a 3 to a 4 or 7 to an 8,.
00:28:38.449 --> 00:28:56.532
I thought about a Bible verse that someone told me one time it's either Corinthians or 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians and it talks about you know we water, you know we sow, but it's God that gives the growth.
00:28:57.799 --> 00:29:02.423
Yes, exactly right, it's very biblical, it's a biblical way to look at it, for sure.
00:29:02.423 --> 00:29:13.667
And, yeah, I think we have to get away from this idea that it's all up to us, you know, put all this pressure on ourselves.
00:29:13.667 --> 00:29:16.053
It's up to me, you know, for this person to get saved.
00:29:16.053 --> 00:29:23.695
No, you know, god will use, like I said earlier, very often, a number of people to you know, to get a person saved.
00:29:23.695 --> 00:29:31.259
And I just, you know, I was saying this even last Saturday to one of my team members, as we were out sharing the gospel.
00:29:31.505 --> 00:29:34.855
I said to her I had a conversation with a man who was very close.
00:29:34.855 --> 00:29:44.054
He didn't even want to hear about church at all, but he was friendly, he was just very firm and, you know, I just kind of listened.
00:29:44.054 --> 00:29:53.277
I didn't try to argue with him, mostly I just listened because I realized that he wasn't open and I just tried to be kind and polite and respectful.
00:29:53.277 --> 00:30:32.991
And I said to my team member after that conversation, just kind of, you know, giving her a little recap of how that conversation had gone, I said you know, my main goal, as I was talking with this man, was really just to give a good impression of Jesus, you know of a Christian, or you know of a Christian as a representative of Jesus, I should say right, and I wanted him to walk away, just feeling like he wasn't being pushed, that I wasn't trying to cram my beliefs down his throat that's what people sometimes will say, that we do and I didn't want him to feel like that.
00:30:32.991 --> 00:30:56.078
I just wanted him to feel respected so that, even though he clearly wasn't open at that moment to hear about the Lord, maybe at some point in the future he will be and then hopefully he will have a good impression of at least, you know, he will hopefully have a good impression of the Christian that he spoke to me that morning.
00:30:56.285 --> 00:31:14.318
Hopefully, because, again, that was just really my goal was to try to make him feel like, yeah, I was just there to listen and I wasn't there to try to push anything on him, and I think that's very important, as we realize that God has a different timing, you know, a different time for every person.
00:31:14.318 --> 00:31:31.740
Not everybody's going to, you know, go from zero to 10 at that moment, but just maybe, even if we can just be good ambassadors for Jesus, the way that we come across, that will leave the person with a feeling that.
00:31:31.740 --> 00:31:34.394
Oh yeah, you know, these Christians are actually okay.
00:31:34.394 --> 00:31:36.332
You know, they're nice people.
00:31:37.446 --> 00:31:47.500
I was wrong about them, so yeah, how do you get through hard times with your glory intact?
00:31:50.103 --> 00:31:51.805
all times with your joy intact.
00:31:51.805 --> 00:31:58.680
Yes, that is a wonderful, wonderful question.
00:31:58.680 --> 00:32:02.188
It's funny that you asked that because I was actually earlier today.
00:32:02.188 --> 00:32:18.353
I was sitting here, I was polishing an article for my blog article for my blog and that article is actually titled how to Spell Joy this Christmas.
00:32:18.353 --> 00:32:22.684
How to Spell Joy this Christmas I don't know if you've heard this acronym before, dorsey, but J-O-Y.
00:32:22.924 --> 00:32:28.711
It said that it stands for Jesus, others and you, jesus, others, you.
00:32:28.711 --> 00:32:53.700
That spells joy, and if we can really just try to keep Jesus first and other people and focus a little less on ourselves, I think that we are going to experience joy and we are going to realize that we can have tremendous joy even when life is difficult.
00:32:53.700 --> 00:33:03.637
When I say to put yourself last, you know, of course I don't mean to be a doormat, I just mean that you know we naturally have a tendency to put ourselves first.
00:33:03.637 --> 00:33:05.407
You know it's just what we do as humans.
00:33:05.407 --> 00:33:08.353
You know because we are, you know, self-centered.
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Just what we do as humans.
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