Italian Cream Sodas, please?

Hello! Katelyn Gudim here, I figured I’d start with a few things you should know about me. I loathe coffee. So I guess I don’t fit in around here as well J I love Italian Cream Sodas and long words that nobody uses. I spend hours in nature, I have a life dream to someday fly a kite, and I long to live in a yellow house someday. Now onto other such things…

I grew up in the small town of Rockford, MN with a loving family where we went to Sunday school each week and said our prayers at night. Christ didn’t really have a significant role in my life until we started attending Grace Free Lutheran in Maple Grove; it was there that I first saw people who’s lives looked like that of Christ’s, and it was intriguing. It wasn’t until I was initiated (and by initiated, I mean tortured) into youth group. That was the summer after my sixth grade and we had a “Work Camp” (Okay..so they’re not as mean as I make them sound..) at the AFLBS campus. That week I was amazed as I looked around and saw how everyone seemed to have something that I didn’t, and I couldn’t figure it out. Each day we had a scheduled time to do our daily devotions, and I had never done this before so I wasn’t really sure what to do. I remember sitting on the bed and flipping my Bible open to Romans 10:9 which reads, “If you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved”. That day I decided I would devote my life to following Chris.

After this I quickly realized that I was the only believer in my grade at the public school in town, and none of my friends seemed to want anything to do with God. I was devastated at first, and begged to enroll in a Christian school nearby. When that didn’t happen, God started showing me why He had called me to be a light in a dark place. I spent a lot of time investing in relationships there until my junior year, when I decided to do Post Secondary at North Hennepin Community College. This spring I will be graduating from there with my Associates degree as well as from Rockford high school—pretty sweet if you ask me!

As for my future, all I can say is that I have no idea what God has in store for me. I will be attending AFLBS in the fall (I’m sure this is no shocker to many of you readers!) but that’s as far as I know. My heart’s desire is for children, and I can’t imagine my life without them. I also have a strong passion for Africa and would one day like to perfect my current attempts at learning Swahili. So I suppose I could say my ideal future would consist of working as a teacher or at an orphanage in East Africa— but lately I’ve realized that more important than that I want to be right in the middle of God’s will for my life, and if that’s in the middle of nowhere in America without children, then I will still praise my God because I know He has everything in control. I hope these posts will encourage you to dig deeper in your relationship with our Heavenly Father!

“For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

~Jeremiah 29:11