surrendering fear – being released – receiving abundance

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come on in and have a seat. We are a big family

so you’ll fit right in. There is room for you.

Gratitude

Time once felt like ketchup resisting movement from it's glass bottle encasement. For instance, it took forever to reach the age of 13. FOREVER. By the time November 25, 1983 rolled around, I had long since given up on it ever arriving. Now time feels like slick and...

Surprisingly Vulnerable

Last evening we attended a conference meeting. In short, I have a level of expectation about these events.  Like the Sunday services of my childhood, where we always sang verses 1,2, & 4 of the hymn, omitting the equally poetic third stanza, to more-assuredly...

Space to Heal

February 17, 2018 Tonight I find myself in Thailand... ...on a non-touristy stretch of beach clamoring with village dogs, washed-up jellyfish, and the occasional topless European. For ten years we've wrestled our way here, collapsing at a sacred retreat...

Beginning Again

If I hide inside the unanswered questions and whisper in the caverns of fear and lack, then I rob Him of His glory when He shows off His brilliant compassion again.

Haven Seattle

In the fall of 2018 we will open the doors of Haven Seattle. Haven Seattle is a community focused on serving international students, Third-culture kids, and those in need of connection in the Seattle area.

There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

― Nelson Mandela

Amanda Hostetler

I’m Amanda.  I’m deeply flawed.  I’m a storyteller.

Like a little girl trying to walk in my Momma’s high heels,  I’m often unsure and unsteady. Yet I am passionate about wringing out every ounce of zeal in my daily life…to burn like a super nova for His glory… while practicing the art of lingering to savor all the abundance He has provided.

Some mothers say that after they had children they lost their identity.  Instead of being ‘Sara’ or ‘Mary’ they are now ‘Kevin’s mom’ or ‘Steve’s mom’.  Well… around town I’m known as ‘that mother with 13 kids‘.  I’ve been blessed with 2 through marriage, 3 by birth, and 8 through adoption and I couldn’t imagine life without any one of them!  My husband Douglas and I feel mostly that we’re going through life with our hair on fire!

I have a messy past full of brokenness that brought  me to the end of myself and to the beginning of the reality of God’s grace, and His grace transformed me. Now I live my life fighting for people, both kids and adults, to see their value and to be released fully into the potential God created in them.  For the last 10 years we have been the most unlikely band of cross-cultural workers…mostly just taking up space while living in China.  Yet in those years I have been forever changed by learning from and loving those we once thought we were going to “serve.”