KATIE'S JOURNEY

Hola! For those of you who don’t know me, I am Katie Allen and I am 25 years old. I have lived in Lurgan all of my life went to Lurgan Junior High, Lurgan College then went on to study Spanish & Portuguese at Uni. I have 3 gorgeous retrievers and I confess am a total dog mom. I currently work for Moy Park Chicken in International Sales, which is a lot more exciting than it sounds, promise!

So my God story doesn’t begin with always knowing Jesus, for me that didn’t truly come until I was 14. I didn’t grow up in a Christian home and I can count on one hand the number of times my mum took me to Shankill Parish Sunday School, from which I can't remember much. So I knew from a young age that there was a God, we would always sing about him in Primary School Assemblies and I always loved when the Thorpe Family came to town for a sing along. I never really questioned it as I grew up I just knew there was something there but I had no idea how deep and wide it went, I never fully grasped how much Jesus did for us and I didn’t really have anywhere to find out more.

When I reached the Junior High I was blessed with the best friendship group I could ever have; fast-forward to today 14 years later and we are all still besties! Among that group, a few of the girls came from Christian homes and that had such a massive impact on me growing up especially at that age. One of them invited us all along to Vital in Emmanuel on Friday nights (and now I'm so old I am a leader at Vital yikes) anyway I went and loved it. Maybe for the wrong reasons at first, I loved hanging out with my friends and messing around but we really loved the community, we never wanted to leave! We even persuaded Grant to make an ‘extra-vital’ when we reached 3rd year so we could stay an hour later! But it was the God Spot during Vital that was really the first time I heard about Jesus and my eyes were opened. 

That summer I went to Glo for the first time and encountered God in a way I never had before, I fully felt his presence and one night during the worship at Glo I said that prayer and gave my life over to Jesus.

I can’t say it’s been an easy journey, like anything in life there are good times and bad, c’est la vie but it is so worth it. My first few years of journeying with Jesus were the toughest though when I was 14-17 years old, obviously my family were not Christians, and Christianity was a whole new thing for them, me too. My parents were pretty against it at first and I found myself lying saying I was going out with friends just so I could sneak out and go to church and cell group. It wasn’t ideal but thankfully once I turned 18 this kind of fizzled out, my family were accepting of the life I wanted to live and didn’t question it any more, they even came to my baptism when I was 20 which meant the world to me. I always struggled with not having a rooted background with God, I felt like I had missed out on years of knowledge and stories and I didn’t know any of the answers, ever. I would always dodge the questions about books of the Bible or Bible Stories people memorised from their days at Sunday School. I felt so embarrassed, like I wasn’t a good Christian because I didn’t know everything. Along with that, I started to get pretty nervous in church social settings even though I tried so hard to not let it show I would come across as quite an outgoing person but deep down I get all anxious and worried people would look at me like a lost sheep, at least that’s how I saw it in my head! For a while that held me back from going to Church, I would always be texting my friends to make sure they were going first, or I just wouldn’t have went. But the more I invested in God, in his word, the less nervous I would be. 

When I was 21, as part of my degree I moved to Portugal and lived with a family and worked at the International Evangelical Church of the Algarve. It was such an awakening for me. I know with every bone in my body it was God who placed me in Portugal and God who placed me with a family I had never met before who have been such a blessing to me. It was there that I became part of the Camp Sonshine Portugal team and felt like I had such a purpose in Gods plans. It filled me with a lot of self-confidence and I was totally inspired with the work I could do for God out in Portugal. In the years that followed I really invested time in my relationship with God, I took the quiet time and was patient and slowly but surely I learnt more and more not only about God but myself. I learnt to be bold and be brave. And that was fuelled by positive relationships in my life with my friends and family. 

So I guess my word of advice is never feel like you aren’t enough, don’t feel silly if you don’t know all the books of the Bible, never feel too scared to walk in alone, to speak to someone new or feel embarrassed if you feel a little lost, that’s ok we have all been there and most importantly God loves you no matter what! When I was 15, my first year in Youth, a leader reminded me of something that has stayed with me all of these years and reminded me of my worth, so I want to remind you that you are created by God and you have immeasurable value to him. Draw close to him and he will draw close to you.

Katie x