Meeting Joey Jennings

Africa, December 2012    

The hot African sun beat heavy on my back as clouds of dust hit my face. I was traveling from village to village in a large open-bed truck with a team of people whose purest desire was to spread God's love to the poorest of the poor. I had been in Africa for close to three months and now I was traveling through rural villages with a small tent, a backpack with a few changes of clothes and plenty of sunscreen to appease my European genes. Traveling through bumpy dirt roads, I stood at the front of the truck and lifted my arms to the sky as wind hit my face and my eyes were consumed with the beautiful landscape around me. My mind reflected on the times of discomfort and struggle, fighting every bit of the entitled western mindset that was still in me. My mind went back to the best experiences of my life, meeting so many beautiful inspiring people, seeing God's love heal bodies and renew souls that thought they were completely forgotten. In that moment, in the middle of the African bush, my heart screamed, "I am fully alive!"

Growing up I always had a deep passion in my spirit, but because I didn't know how to properly express what I felt, I always found myself in trouble at school for "opposing authority”.  But I was simply a teenager that felt trapped in what seemed to be a half-baked reality. 

In tenth grade I ended up chatting with an old friend Michael Rogerson (now one of my closest buddies) who I had led worship with in our conservative church several years before. Since our time leading worship Michael had moved to Vegas in pursuit of a sleight of hand career, but when he returned to Florida he was at a dividing point between his traditional Christian upbringing and the lifestyle he had seen openly expressed in Vegas – that was until an old friend invited him to a small church gathering in someone's living room. There he felt God’s presence in a raw and tangible way as he saw physical healings happen before his eyes and God’s love expressed in ways he had never seen before. He began excitedly expressing what he had seen, an explanation that I remember going something like this: "Dude, I like, freaking saw people healed, foreal! God is legit, man!" Long story short, although everything he was saying sounded sketchy to me because of my upbringing, I was hungry for something more, so I began to attend this house church.       

I had only been attending the house church for several weeks when...

I was pumping up BMX bike tires in my friend’s front yard. An old man with a cane was walking down the street and, being the friendly boy that I was, I shouted, "How's it going?" As he walked closer he replied, "Not very well," and began to tell me that he was dying of cancer and only had several weeks left to live. For the first time in my life I felt like God was speaking to me to pray for his healing, so I asked if I could pray for him – and I’ll never forget his reply, "Anything will help at this point." I looked back to my friends, wondering how weird they would think I was and then put my hand on the man’s shoulder and confidently, yet sincerely prayed for his healing. A month later my friends told me that the man was completely better and had been looking for me to thank me for my prayer. I remember thinking... Wow! Is this stuff real?

 Never allow imaginary fears to define real possibilities

    Shortly after receiving this surreal news, the house church I was attending invited me to go to Brazil with them for a two week mission trip. Of course, I excitedly said "Yes" and even though I had only known them for a short period of time, the family paid for most of my trip. While I was in Brazil my life was completely flipped, turned upside-down (Yes, the Fresh Prince of Bellaire song is playing in my head) and my heart was set ablaze for God’s love like it never had been before. After returning, doors started opening up for me to go to places like Guatemala, Jamaica and Dominican Republic.  God began showing me that he wanted to use me in bringing his love to the nations. Over the years he began to speak this truth more and more into my heart and when I graduated high school I went to a three month mission school in Mozambique, Africa.  Not long after returning from Africa, I met up with a childhood friend Alex Lewis to spend a month and a half traveling in Central America bringing God's love to the countries that we visited. Less than a year after, I connected with Matt Nations and Ryan Jasper from Beautiful Feet and we found that our hearts all shared the same passion for spreading God’s love and fighting physical and spiritual poverty in real ways.  It is amazing to see that this connection has turned into what is now the 60 Days Walking journey.  I am stoked out of my mind to join with Alex and James as we embark on this trip as Beautiful Feet, spreading God’s love everywhere that we travel.