Katie never expected to see revival break out in a senior living community. But that’s what happened!

After years serving overseas, she found herself re-establishing her family back home in the United States. She took a job overseeing a community providing care for the elderly, where she noticed something. Despite being part of a Christian organization with a vision for every resident to hear the gospel, this community had no Bible study.

The residents around her were dealing with issues ranging from loneliness to grief to anxiety, or just not really knowing where they’ll be in the next life. Katie began to ask the question, what would it take for every resident of this community to hear the gospel?

She decided to start a Bible Study.

It wasn’t easy, at first. The management of the facility overwhelmed her. “I’m not a calendar mom!” She said. She found herself so busy she had almost completely forgotten about signing up to facilitate the Bible Study. She hadn’t prepared a lesson, she had no printed materials, and no plan!

That’s when Katie remembered an app her husband had shown her some time ago: Waha. Waha was designed from the ground up for simplicity and reproducibility. It completely removes the need to prepare for lessons because it facilitates everything itself. Just hit play to listen to scripture and the discussion questions, hit pause to answer them, and repeat! She quickly redownloaded it and began the first Bible study, hoping for the best.

The lesson was simple, conversational, and easy to facilitate. Residents began opening up to one another. What started as a small gathering of a few women became a consistent weekly community of twelve devoted participants that has continued meeting for over a year!

But the real breakthrough came through the conversations the group created.

One resident of the community was a woman in her 80s who became a resident during the COVID pandemic. For the first six months of her time there, she never left her room. Having grown up Catholic, she knew about Jesus, and had read her Bible, but always assumed God wanted to speak to her priest, not her personally.

By engaging in the process of discovering for herself what the Bible teaches, she began to realize that Jesus wants to speak directly to her, and have relationship with her. She felt young again in His presence. She pulled one of the communty’s chaplains aside after some time attending Katie’s DBS.

“I want to get baptized!” she said.

Surrounded by close friends from the DBS, she shared that after years of religion, she had finally discovered a real relationship with Jesus through the group. They baptized her by pouring a little water over her head, since she was bound to a wheelchair.

What began as a forgotten Bible study became the spiritual heartbeat of the community.

Residents now invite neighbors and friends from around the campus. More have gotten baptized, and conversations spill out beyond the meetings and into hallways, dining rooms, and late-night visits between neighbors.

Residents who once felt isolated are thriving in community. Elderly believers who thought their ministry years were behind them are discovering fresh purpose in sharing Jesus with others around them.

And Katie has been transformed too.

She was once a foreign worker who had returned home, perhaps believing her best years of ministry were behind her. But, watching residents in their 80s and 90s encounter Jesus has shown her that God never done using His people to transform lives and communities!

Today, Katie dreams of launching even more Bible studies throughout the community.