Reading our Bibles regularly can be a challenge, but we're all on this journey together.

We're praying that this podcast inspires you, helps you better understand God's Word, and builds your faith.

This is Join the Journey with your host, Emma Daughter.

Thanks for joining. I am in the podcast studio with today's Devo writer and one of our journey editors.

It's LK. Ortiz. Oh, so glad to be here, Emma, and just appreciate your invite to come here and discuss First Kings 2.

I'm so glad you're here, LK., and I know that you have a really fun story given that this is the Join the Journey podcast and would love for you to share how you came to know the Lord and then fast forward. What's going on in your world today?

Absolutely. So just to give a little backstory, I grew up with some amazing grandparents who really reflected the love of Christ in every way that they lived.

They loved each other.

They loved their neighbors.

And they just cared for me so deeply and it reflected God's love fully and completely.

And then when I was nine, my grandfather passed away and went to

go live with my parents. And within a year, they were divorced. And I was young and had to start

working full time to help my mom. And it was incredibly difficult to try to juggle taking my

brother and sister to school. Most of the time we didn't have electricity or food in the pantry.

And I had bullied this, you know, if I worked hard, that everything was going to be okay,

and the Lord would take care of me. And I can remember praying one day in the car for food.

And when that prayer was not answered, I began to believe that Christianity must be a fairy tale and became an atheist.

And so fast forward to my early 20s at 20 years old, I started working at a animation

studio here in Dallas.

So fun.

And it was fun because I was the only female, surrounded by a whole bunch

of Aggies. And they had the giant ping pong table in the middle of the room and would just

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