35 YEARS OF SERVICE

How did you first join Highlands?
When I was a freshman at Hazen, a friend invited me to join her at a youth gathering at Highlands. I continued to come to youth events and played in HCC’s volleyball league. During my senior year, my family started attending services at Highlands, which was much closer to home than our church in Seattle. I’ve been here ever since.

Do you have a favorite Highlands memory that you can share with us?
Wally Wilson invited a guest speaker to tell the congregation about a gospel pavilion that was being planned for the World’s Fair Expo 86 in Vancouver, B.C. He was promoting the project, asking for prayer, and recruiting young adults to staff The Pavilion of Promise. That was the first time, when hearing something like that, I realized, “I can do that!” One week after graduating from the University of Washington, my parents dropped me off in Vancouver for the start of my first short-term missions project. I was there for four months, right up to the last day of the fair.

While the memory I chose to share was the aha moment when I realized that opportunities like that were not just for “other people” but that God could and did call me too, there is another related fun memory I’d like to share as well. Two months into my time at Expo 86, immigration required me to cross the border into the U.S. and back into Canada. A carload of my friends drove to Renton and spent the weekend at my parents’ house. We happened to be at the worship service on the Sunday Highlands was celebrating our 40^th anniversary as a church.

What is an example of God’s faithfulness you have seen as a member of Highlands?
We’re still here after the drama of the last few years. The Bible is full of stories of lives full of great faith, foolish unbelief, triumph, and failure. That it still happens shouldn’t be a surprise. Praise Jesus that by His grace, the winds blew and the waves crashed and our foundation proved firm. I believe Highlands’ future is bright.

What do you enjoy about your staff role in our church?
I love being in a support role. My brain works in checklists and timelines. I know that reading that will make some folks shudder but it’s my fish-in-water. I screen the phone solicitors, order supplies, book rooms, and the like, ideally before other staff have had to think about those details (which make some of them shudder).

Which of our core values (Word-centered Ministry, Persistent Prayer, Gospel-shaped Community, Future Generations, Missionary Heart) is most meaningful to you and why?
Missionary Heart. My great aunt was a missionary to China and my hero. To me, the highest praise my parents could ever give me was when they’d say I’d reminded them of Aunt Margaret. I’d planned to be a career missionary, was a missions intern at Highlands under Don Parrott, and spent two years in Japan working with HCC missionaries, Bob and Norma Pitney. I eventually discovered that my true calling was serving in the church office but while working here, I spent 10 years on the missions committee, was on the first large team that went to Moldova in the 1990s, and have always had a heart for our missionaries and those they serve. One of the unique things about Highlands that I am particularly proud of is the large number of missionaries we have supported over the years who have been homegrown, members of the HCC family we’ve rubbed shoulders with in services, community groups, and classes who were called by God into fulltime missionary service.