As I spent the last 5 days reflecting on 2025, I am just full of thankfulness and awe of all He can fit in one year. I truly live an abundant life.
In 2025, I was in 15 nations:
Brazil (2x), India, Tanzania, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Lebanon, Mongolia, Greece (plus Crete) Malta, Turkey, the Vatican, Cyprus, Italy and of course the USA.
5 of the nations were new and I finish the year having gone to 83 nations in total out of the 195 nations He called me to. I am on my 78th journal.
In the Extreme Places discipleship training school and on Word by Heart on Location: Acts that I led this year, we shared the gospel with over 6,000 people, saw 867 people saved in the 25 nations the two schools went to, we gave out 1000+ Bibles, saw over 100 healings, started 33 bible study groups, built 2 churches, saw deliverances, and baptized many.
2025 was marked by wholeheartedness. Jesus gave me the theme to “love the Lord with all your heart.” The key word was “the Lord.” He has to be that in our lives.
Biblically, He usually gives me a yearly focus and for 2025, He led me to read Romans on repeat through the lens of how I can love Him more with all my heart.
I really thought reading Romans over and over would be more about systematic theology, but instead it was all about FAITH. Over and over God emphasized, underlined and reiterated that we actually live by FAITH. It’s our very existence.
In the beginning of the year, we prayed in our leadership training and asked God about the specific way He made us. He told me I was “Hurricane Teresa.” One of my biggest intercessors calls me that:) God uses me to destroy boxes we’ve made that aren’t Biblical and He allows me to speak to people about how to rebuild based on His word. A hurricane destroys and after that we rebuild.
The last two years He has me detoxing from all the extra-biblical input. For the last two years, I have lost my taste buds to eat someone’s leftovers on how they interpret the Bible like in podcasts, watching sermons online, listening to the “new” prophetic word or even reading books. He promised me I would have dove’s eyes in 2025 and that’s how I got it…I just focused in on one thing…the Word.
I just want the Bible.
I see how far we drift from the Word of God and it’s foundation in our discipleship and how we do missions when I only digest the Word and not everyone else’s opinions on how to do Christianity. Culturally Christianity is one of the boxes I have loved demolishing in 2025. Cultural Christianity freaks me out because we can easily be deceived on how we do missions and discipleship just because so and so said.
You get enough so and so’s to agree on a concept and not enough the Bible said so’s and you find yourself living and defending a message or model Jesus never wanted.
We just make new man made rules on how to disciple that remind me of how the Pharisees got off track. Their desire was to follow God so closely that they didn’t want to break the law so they made a bunch of extra laws and lost the heart of following God. I don’t want to do that in discipleship. I want to look the most like how Jesus discipled His 12. If I can’t see it in Jesus, I don’t want it.
And if you tell me it should be this or that way, you gotta show me where you find that in the Bible, otherwise your “sword” isn’t really a sword…but more like a plastic knife, a fine sounding argument that can’t stand, and will break under any pressure put to it.
Also, of course in missions…if I can’t see what you are saying from how Jesus ministered in the gospels and how the disciples went on to preach the glorious gospel with all boldness and without hinderance for the first 30 pivotal years after Jesus ascended in the book of Acts…..then I also don’t want it.
I did complete the wholehearted rap and got a beat to it. Jesus took His rightful bestie place. I have yet to present the rap, in full, publicly but I will. He told me the rap was done in me when an imam (muslim leader) told me “you are obsessed with Jesus” when I was in Cyprus. The Lord showed me when a complete non-believer sees your obsession with Me, then your heart is mine.
He told me the key verse from Romans would be chapter 2:28-29 “And true circumcision is not merely obeying the letter of the law; rather, it is a change of heart produced by the Spirit. And a person with a changed heart seeks praise from God, not from people.” This means if your heart is truly changed, by the Spirit, you will fear God above man. You will seek to please Him.
Psalm 37: 3 was on repeat. “Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.” It’s really just that simple and starts with trusting God. When we trust Him, we will have His fruit, we will abide and be faithful. It sums up a lot of whether we are 6 month on fire followers or faithful til the end.
He told me I would raise the dead in 2025. I was thinking literally raise people from the dead, but now in reflection He meant what I call the “save your life” modern mission’s movement. In the last 23 years in missions, missionaries are the ONLY ones who have told me not to share the gospel, especially in the -stans and 10/40 window sections of the world. That’s the saddest reality that exists in missions today. They lost me on all their code words, fine sounding arguments and the amount of self focus. Jesus showed me it was like what He said in Revelation to the church of Sardis “I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up!“
So many missionaries are not sharing the gospel in what we would call “the hardest and darkest places of the world” because they are being afraid of persecution, prison, being kicked out, and all kinds of things related to saving their lives and the lives of those they minister to. I just don’t read that in the book of Acts. When Jesus said “if you save your life you will lose it and it you lose your life for My sake and the sake of the gospel you find it”…I’m 100% SURE HE meant what He SAID.
And I see a lot of missionaries saving their lives. We need to wake up.
It reminds me of King Josiah finding the Bible after 50+ years of anorexia on the Word of God and totally demolishing all the JUNK that got built when people were severely malnourished and about to die. King Josiah woke up and woke everyone else up.
I just came off the best season of my life. I remember in 2023 dreaming up Word by Heart on Location, the book of Acts and then we just completed it on December 21st. Everyone was on the same page and knew we could boldly preach the gospel everywhere. We were marked with JOY and UNITY. We immersed ourselves in Acts and were totally transformed. We not only read, memorized and studied the book, we attempted to live it.
One thing I loved in the book of Acts, is they are so much a part of the “lose your life” mission’s camp that when persecuted they rejoiced, when pressed they don’t need a year off, more counseling, and a “break” to take care of me, they instead pray and ask for more boldness and just keep preaching. They move on outwardly. That’s what we read in our quiet time and talk about in our Bible studies. I hope we aren’t just hearers of the Word and not doers.
This year, in YWAM Kona, I got to teach in FF Movement, FF Extreme Places, Brave Love DTS, Performing Arts DTS, Crossroads DTS, Foundations school from the very young to high school, and in Word by Heart Korean school on campus about evangelism and the Holy Spirit. I also was asked to speak in our Campus wide community night on Evangelism.
Gen Alpha was a HUGE highlight this year. (8-14 year olds) They carry so much boldness and are like a John the Baptist generation. I got to minister with them a lot. They came to Sunday Evangelism, a 24 hour prayer/EV burn and also on the streets of Kona as a part of their school.
I got to live with the students in A building on campus. I never want to get away from how Jesus discipled. He would live in A building.
I did my first ever pull up, God challenged me to do 100 burpees a day for a quarter, did a full marathon and God allowed me to finish in the exact time I wanted…4:30, and ran my fastest 3 miles to date at 23:49. I like to go from glory to glory spiritually every year and only God can do that as I listen to Him. Every year gets better and better. He also pushes me physically. The physical usually represents the spiritual.
I had the honor of officiating 2 weddings this year, my dear friends Chloe & Isaiah and also some other dear friends, Patrick & Sara.
I turned 25 this year in the Lord. 25 years of walking with Jesus and never turning back shows me it is possible as long as we stay close to Him, have people praying for us and follow God. He is the one who keeps me but I also carry a real fear of the Lord that I could be one step away from stupid, so I keep my testimony close to my face and meet with Him daily. I want to love the narrow path more and more and stay close to Him all my days until I see Him face to face.
I learned this year as I built my remembrance stones and took dayyyysss to read through my journals in reflection that sometimes I heard God right and sometimes I didn’t. Thankfully most of the time I heard right and in the places I didn’t, there was usually human will involved in other people. So maybe I did hear Him right, but people choose whether to say yes to God or not. Instead of being disappointed in hearing Him wrong, He showed me He loves the journey more. How I cling to His voice and trust it…this is Lordship. My goal is to listen and obey. And this is how I can love the Lord with all my heart. As David Hamilton started the year in Kona, he said “we must remember that in the command to love God with all of our heart, we must look at a key part of the verse…hear, O Israel…(Deut 6:4-5).” And when I asked Darlene Cunningham, what YWAM value we could work on, she said “to hear God.”
We can’t love God with all of our heart unless He is Lord. And He can NOT be Lord if we don’t listen and obey. Which brings me to my final quiet time of 2025, this morning where I finished my 14th reading of Romans this year. I read chapter 16’s doxology and I took a deep breath and smiled.
“Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, to bring about the obedience of faith— to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen.” (Romans)
When He is Lord, we will preach the gospel to all nations so everyone can obey the God we listen to…who gets all the glory.
Period.
Funniest moment of 2025: My last day with Elijah Belay in Rome, Italy…I almost peed laughing as he put lollipops in my hoodie. He literally has been my funniest moment for 3 years in a row.
Greatest run of 2025: June 21, 2025 marathon in Kona where He showed me how much I love community to run with and He had me finish on exactly the time I hoped for 4hr 30 minutes.
Greatest compliment of 2025: “an imam told me I was really obsessed with Jesus.” That was the turning point for when I knew Jesus had my whole heart and when the rap was done in me.
My favorite song of 2025: For sure Tiffany Hudson’s “All of the Sudden” was on repeat
Best salvation story of 2025: seeing a Shiite Muslim in the Hezbollah territory in Lebanon {that I ministered to last year} come to faith over the course of the year
Best answer to prayer in 2025: I’d have to say the rice pudding in Crete because it shows how much I trust just asking my Dad for everything…the little and the big
Most refreshing moment in 2025: reading the doxology this morning in Romans and realizing I’m living it….a beautiful to way to finish out 2025 in Romans
Best book I read in 2025: Romans
Fave ministry moment of 2025: going down to the Hezbollah territory in Lebanon with Katy Barajas 10 days after it was bombed to go see those I had ministered to in the fall of 2024 and finding out one of them got saved!
Most repeated Scripture He highlighted to me in 2025: Psalm 37:3
Favorite part of 2025: Word by Heart on Location: Acts…most joyful, bold, like minded all on the same page group I’ve ever had the JOY of running with…the closest thing to the book of Acts I’ve lived.
You Will Go To Every Nation 