I’m Laura Hills. Here’s how I’m living deeply. 

“I grew up in Leeds, England, believing in the Big Bang and reading my horoscope, and somehow also believing there was something -someone- behind it all. I just didn’t have a name for it. My mum was raised Methodist- but in our house, faith was something that happened once (at your christening) and then you were done. No church. No Bible. Just a quiet feeling I couldn’t explain- like I was the odd one out for even wondering if there was more. America had always pulled at me, even before any of this faith stuff started making sense (maybe because I’d grown up watching American television!). So while I was at university, thanks to a cultural exchange program, I spent three summers working as a counselor at a Jewish camp called Camp America- first in ME, then PA. I’d actually wanted a Christian camp, but most of those wanted leaders who already knew the Bible, which wasn’t me yet. Still, I loved Camp America. But every time it ended, I had to go home. And I kept thinking: ‘I don’t just want summers here. I want a whole year. I want to see the seasons change.’ People at camp were always telling me I was a natural with kids. So once I graduated, I started looking into becoming an au pair (something that barely exists back home) in the U.S. I wanted to be with a Christian family and told the placing agency exactly that. And on the night of May 13th, 2024, I matched with Kati and Nathan Goodner, who are members at CSPC. Our first video call was chaos. The littlest of their three kids, David, had a diaper explosion mid-call. Their oldest, Andrew -only in preschool himself- was bouncing around in the background like a maniac. Kati looked mortified, like, ‘This girl is never going to want this family.’ But I just laughed and thought, ‘This is exactly my age range. This is exactly what I love!’ What I really couldn’t stop thinking about was how warm Kati was. Like a mum welcoming me in before I’d even arrived. Looking back now, I think that was the Holy Spirit quietly opening a door I didn’t even know I was looking for. Saying yes to this family, it turned out, would mean saying yes to the biggest change of my life.

The first time I walked into CSPC with the Goodners, in September 2024, I teared up. I wasn’t expecting to, but I did. I just remember standing there, listening to everyone around me actually singing -singing like they MEANT it!- and thinking, ‘People still do this? This is real to them?’ In England, churches are mostly just old buildings you drive past. But CSPC was full, and alive, with people singing like it mattered. I kept thinking, ‘Why didn’t I grow up with this?’ As soon as I heard Pastor James, I thought, ‘He feels like home.’ I also met [CSPC Worship Associate] Beth Calvert pretty quickly. Finding out she was from the North of England like me, it was so nice to connect with her and hear about connections for when I go back home. So CSPC and Beth were both key encouragements for me. And living with the Goodners, I started noticing things. Little things that made a big impact on me. Each of their kids had memorized a psalm- not because anyone made them, but because it was just part of bedtime, alongside the Bible stories and the prayers before dinner. Nobody made it a big production- it was just how they lived. I noticed the air felt different in their house, too. Lighter. Fewer arguments than the average family house. More patience. They were constantly bringing things back to ‘Thank you, God, for this,’ and it seemed to affect the whole atmosphere. I started helping with bedtime just so I could be near it. I wanted to understand what made this family feel the way it did. I’d ask Nathan questions- and he always had an answer. Gently. Patiently. Like he’d been asked it before and didn’t mind being asked again. I started to feel like their children -Andrew, Mary Grace, and David- weren’t just kids I was paid to look after. I was their nanny, of course, but I was becoming something more like a big sister who happened to live in their house. As I grew closer to this family, the concept of faith started to seem less distant and old-fashioned.

The questions came fast once I let myself ask them: Why would a kind God send anyone to Hell? Why do bad things happen to good people? How is the Bible even true? Through the Goodners, I found a friend named Stacey. She was wrestling with her own questions too, having just come out of a really difficult background herself. We became fast friends, the kind where you don’t have to explain why you’re crying when you’re meeting together at a coffee shop. Through her, I found a group called Adventure Junkies. (Started years before by a guy whose granddad goes to CSPC, it’s now grown to include over a thousand young people across Knoxville.) I remember sitting in the parking lot before my first worship night with them, genuinely nervous to walk in. We went anyway. And everyone there made us feel like we’d always belonged. That’s where I met CSPC’s Sarah Badgett, who became another faithful friend. She basically made it her mission to walk through my questions with me, coffee date after coffee date. ‘Why would a good God allow suffering? Why do we need saving at all?’ I would ask. Sarah never once made me feel stupid for asking. She just answered, one question at a time, until the next one came. I remember Pastor James once preached about butterflies- how no single person brings you to faith. It’s the whole body of the Church, dozens of little encounters, each one carrying a piece of the truth toward you. Looking back, that’s exactly what happened to me. It was the Goodners. It was Beth. It was Stacey. It was Sarah. It was a thousand strangers turned friends at a worship night. I wasn’t being preached at. I was being loved into the truth.

Allow me to take you back with me to July 31st last year. I was floating on my back in a lake, looking up at the stars. The Goodners had let me and Stacey borrow their family’s lake house for the weekend. We’d just watched the most beautiful sunset of my life and then gone for a swim after dark. And lying there, looking up, a thought hit me that had never landed quite like this before: ‘Someone made this. This isn’t an accident. This isn’t just chance.’ The next morning, I woke up before Stacey and put on the CSPC service remotely. (I did that a lot when I couldn’t be there in person.) Pastor James’ preaching cut through to my heart as he read the Scriptures: ‘Know therefore that the Lord your God is God.’ All the pieces I’d been collecting were suddenly locking into place at once. I knew. This was the day. Stacey woke up, and I told her what I was feeling. She didn’t say much- she just sat with me and prayed while I talked it through out loud, called a couple of friends, asked a few more questions. And then I broke down in tears and said, ‘I think I’m ready.’ She asked me straight from Romans: ‘Do you believe that Jesus is God?’ I did. It wasn’t dramatic after that. No lightning bolt, no instant transformation. I remember thinking, ‘Now I have to know everything!’ But, of course, that’s not how it works. Salvation isn’t the finish line, it’s the starting line. I’ve spent this past year learning that the slowest, steadiest growth is still growth. I’ve learned to pray out loud for strangers. I’ve learned that grace isn’t something you earn- it’s something you’re simply given, fully, by a God who already knows everything about you and stays committed to you anyway.

In September, I go home to England. A world where nobody prays out loud. Nobody talks about being ‘saved.’ I’ll be the only one. That won’t be easy. But I’m not alone, either. God’s with me, and it’s His work to save my family and my friends, not mine. My job is just to plant seeds and be faithful- to actually live differently in a way they can see and not just talk about it. So that’s the plan. Go home. Keep praying- even when it feels foreign, because it always has in my family. Keep reading my Bible, where they can see it. Keep working through the hard questions instead of avoiding them, the way Sarah and Nathan did for me. Maybe find work as a nanny or teaching assistant, somewhere I can quietly be a light for someone else’s kids the way the Goodners were for me. I won’t have CSPC to walk into every Sunday. But I’ll still watch from a distance, like I did before I even moved here. And I know my friends in Knoxville -Beth, Stacey, Sarah, the whole Adventure Junkies crew- will be praying for me from four thousand miles away. Plus, I’ll have the joy of returning to spend Thanksgiving with my second family, the Goodners. What a reunion, and I can’t wait! I came to America to be a family’s nanny. I’m leaving as someone who finally knows Whose child I am.”