Emily didn’t have time to get homesick. 

An independent and self-driven executive, she was too busy with her global career to think about the home she’d left behind. 

By the age of 29, she had lived in three nations, traveled to 13 countries, and experienced all the success and privilege her career could offer.

But while living in Dubai, she looked around and realized that none of it seemed real. Everything in her life felt hollow and self-focused, designed to keep her from needing to depend on anyone else. 

Her privileged life felt like a “golden cage.” What she really longed for was something authentic.

She knew what authenticity looked like. She had experienced as a child when her dad had introduced her to Andy Stanley’s messages on DVD.

“It was the epitome of excitement to go to the store and pick which ‘Andy Stanley’ to buy,” she says.

When her family stopped going to church in her teenage years, Emily kept listening to Andy every week.

Then at 19, Emily left home. She never went back to church. She stopped reading the Bible. And prayer no longer had any place in her life.

Now in Dubai, hungry for something more authentic in her life, Emily chose an extreme. She moved to Japan, having never traveled there and knowing none of the language.

“I still do not know if I was naïve, ambitious, desperate, or wise, but if what I longed for was something real, I was about to walk into life-changing reality with no frame of reference or familiar comforts,” 

In Japan, Emily enjoyed all the markers of success. As a director of the best luxury hotel in the second-largest city in the country, she broke records and beat all the odds.

During this time, however, five of her family members died. 

Three others were diagnosed with cancer. 

Surrounded by millions of people in a city as dense as they came, Emily felt completely isolated.

“I have never felt as alone or lonely in my life,”

“I abandoned usual vices and, in a way that felt natural, started to listen to Your Move,”

Every day, she tuned into Your Move episodes, watched messages on YouTube, and listened to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast. 

She started reading the Bible again too.

Soon, she found herself praying every night. Every morning, she surrendered her day to the Lord.

Generosity came next, and she began giving from her paychecks before saving or spending any of it.

Longing to reconnect with her family, Emily committed to returning home at the end of her two-year commitment in Japan, even though it meant declining several good job offers.

“I have no job lined up yet—unknown territory to me,” she says. “But I know I should follow this path and timeline to reconnect to purpose with more clarity than I ever understood before.”

“A plan is in place for when I return home as a daughter to give some well-deserved attention to my seemingly non-existent personal life,”

She also plans to join a church and a small group, start a course in reading the New Testament, and contribute her time and money to causes that matter.

None of this would be possible if it weren’t for Your Move and Andy’s messages.

“For me it is a story of how God through you saved my life,” Emily says to Andy. “I am so grateful that you were always there when I was lost.”