Hi, I’m Audrey… welcome to my website! I am in Taiwan working in a ministry of OMF International called the Pearl Family Garden. My team is one of several teams of OMF folk that are living and working in an inner city area of Taipei called Wanhua. Our hope and prayer is to see people’s lives wholly transformed my Jesus – spiritually, socially, relationally, emotionally, economically. The Pearl Family Garden specifically reaches out to marginalized women in the red light district.
A bit of the backstory…
My life has been living proof that Christ really does heal and give life to people in ways richer than words can say. What can I say about the love of God? Just tasting a bit of it had has been enough for me to know that all the most eloquent words in the world could never say how magnificent He is.
I am American-born, but Taiwanese by blood and grew up in a home that was very proud of that heritage. I went to college in Chicago, and helped to start the Hyde Park Vineyard Church. It was there that I encountered God’s love, healing, and the power of the Holy Spirit in ways I hadn’t experienced before. Then I moved to New Haven, CT to attend Yale Divinity School before working for a few years as the music director of St. Paul’s Darien. In the year before I moved to Taiwan, I was part of another church plant, a community of dear friends called the Elm City Vineyard Church.
Urban poverty started grabbing my attention in 1999 when a few families and homeless folk on Chicago’s South Side turned my world upside down while I was at Hyde Park Vineyard. Mentors and heroes that have consequently influenced me are my pastor from Hyde Park Vineyard, Rand Tucker; another Vineyard pastor, Jamie Wilson; Nef Serrano, Pastor Wayne Gordon and the lovely folk of the Lawndale community who welcomed me in the summer of 2003; Jackie Pullinger; and John M. Perkins.
Going to Taiwan wasn’t the obvious next step. I was originally looking to plant deeper roots in New Haven or to move to Cambodia, but discovered that God had other plans. I tell this story elsewhere, but Taiwan is part of a bigger picture in which I’m a work in progress.
Other random facts: I love tea, gardening, good food, writing real, handmade letters, and music – especially old-time gospel and blues. I laugh a lot. And if my friends were not such a delightfully singular cast of characters, I might say that some of my most cherished friends are books.
Enjoy my website! Feel free to contact me with questions or comments.
Photos (left to right from top): visiting Taiwan with my family, Elm City Vineyard’s first baptism – just a few months after the church started, friends from Washington Park, leading worship at the Hyde Park Vineyard 10th Anniversary Celebration
–Last updated Nov 22, 2011
