I am the second oldest of seven homeschooled children. I grew up in the lovely state of  Pennsylvania. Reading and writing were my favorite things to do as a kid.

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From the time I was about eight years old, I wanted to be a missionary. In 2007 I went on my first overseas trip to Uganda with Teen Mission Int'l. After that, I joined Youth With A Mission (YWAM) Pittsburgh. With YWAM, I shared the Gospel in multiple countries and around the U.S. I left YWAM in 2014 and joined the staff at a Bible Camp in Iowa. While there, I learned to facilitate the high ropes course and led the young leader’s program. In 2018, I moved back home.

Through all of my travels, I never lost my love of reading. As the years have come and gone, I have found that I enjoy writing stories more than I ever realized. In everything I write, I ask the Lord to guide my words and try to express Godly themes in applicable ways.

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I am on staff with Youth With A Mission Philadelphia. The rest of my time is split between family, friends, and writing.

I enjoyed writing as a kid, but reading was where I LIVED. I lived vicariously through the adventures, trials, ups, downs, failures, and successes of the real-life and fictional characters I read about.  I learned life lessons alongside them. I cried with them. I rejoiced with them. The stories I read were my mentors and friends.

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I've loved reading stories and even making them up for as long as I can remember, though I never shared them with anyone. One day, my mom gave me a writing assignment and instead of a research paper, which I hated writing, I wrote her a story. Until recently, that was the only story I ever shared. 

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Through my travels, all the scenery I saw, books I read, and things I imagined, it all got my mind going. I started writing more, still not sharing my stories with anyone other than my mom and younger sister. My mom kept asking me why I didn't share them. She didn't like my answer. I told her there was so much of myself in the stories that it was a terrifying thought to think of someone else reading them. Someone getting to know those deeper parts of me. No, thank you. My mom looked at me and said, "Kayla, God has given you a talent. Isn't it a sin to hide it?" Well, she had me there. I prayed about it and felt like God was prompting me to share my stories. 

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I fully believe that God can and will use my stories to touch people's lives. It is my prayer that He does... since He's the one who gave me these stories in the first place. 

YWAM Philadelphia's first DTS. We started during COVID, and while it was hard, we saw God move in awesome ways! I could not go on the overseas outreach because I got sick, but the team went to Mexico. 

This is one of the five teams we had out on the streets during the summer. We had around 63 teens who came to get closer in their relationship with God and be trained in sharing their faith. We had a week of training and then a week of street ministry. 

We go out at least once a week as a team to pray for people and share the Gospel. The response from the people of Philadelphia is mostly encouraging as many people thank us for being out there and say that this is the kind of thing that is needed,