It was spring of 2004. The YWAM mobile ministry team I was currently a member on was on your in California, listening to a teacher we admired and praying with some like-hearted people. A man I have only just met drops a book in my lap, winks at me and walks away (I would find out later it was the wife of the speaker who I hadn’t spoken with at all who gifted me with the book). I look down to see the strange title – Red Moon Rising by an Englishman named Pete Greig (I admit that my American mind at the time read it as “Greeg”). Little did I know in that moment how strongly that book would influence the trajectory of my life.

Fast forward a few months. I am reading alone in my room. The house is silent as nearly all my team mates have gone to bed. This strange-titled book has gripped my heart and imagination and I find myself silently weeping as my heart cries out “I’ve found my tribe!” It wasn’t that I didn’t love my YWAM friends and colleagues or even what I was doing. But there were truths around the beautifully powerful relationship between prayer, mission and justice that I had been discussing my YWAM colleagues and these conversations usually resulted in most of them staring off into space and me feeling unheard and frustrated. As I flipped through the pages of Red Moon Rising I read and re-read those same truths and convictions and questions and dreams that had been incubating within me for so long. I was ready to pack my bags and move to the UK then!

It would be 4 years before God would release me to leave the US and 5 years before I made the move but that one book – the stories that make up the story of the 24-7 Prayer movement – caused me move half-way around the world and away from all that felt known, safe and secure.

There is so much more to this story as, in many ways, I feel God had been preparing me for this long-term commitment to the nation of Scotland since I was a child. But that is for another time.

My story, my journey to Scotland, has been re-telling itself in my mind much as of late. This past August was the 10 year mark of my life in Scotland. Crazy to think! It doesn’t feel that long. Yet when I look at photos of when I first moved here it is clear it really has been that long. More lines have formed around my face, more “silver” hairs have appeared and I think in “Scottish” rather than in American English now.

The other thing that makes this 10 year mark so special is that this week it was the 20th birthday of 24-7 Prayer. Wow! So much to celebrate!

What stands out to most as I reflect on the past 20 years of 24-7 Prayer and on the past 10+ years of my own journey with 24-7 Prayer is the relationships. Involvement with this wild, beautifully diverse movement has taken me so many places within Scotland and across Europe. I have had the privilege of experiencing prayer rooms in Slovakia, taking part in 24-7 Prayer conferences in places like Dublin, Ireland and Vienna, Austria, visiting 24-7 Prayer communities in places like north-east Germany, encouraging churches and individuals in prayer across Scotland, partnering with amazing organisations like IJM to host events and raise awareness on issues of justice. It has been exciting, challenging, fun, varied, and hugely inspiring. But the most precious aspect of it all has been the relationships.

And that is what defines 24-7 Prayer for me – commitment to relationship with God and with one another. Yes, it is wild, passionate, filled with activists, with varied cultures from across the globe with different perspectives, different customs; we are always moving, always fluid, always growing – but we feel like family, we feel like the same tribe. Because in the midst of the varied cultures and differing perspectives, the vision is Jesus. He was the vision 20 years ago and He still is the vision – probably even more so now.

He was the vision that drove me to Scotland and it is the vision of Him that has caused me to put down roots here and call this beautiful, unique nation my own, my people.

So happy birthday, 24-7 Prayer! And happy 10th anniversary to me! Here’s to the years ahead as we continue to follow Jesus (or the Wild Goose as the Celtic church phrased it) on this wild ride of prayer, mission and justice!

“They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence…” Excerpt from The Vision Poem by Pete Greig