# @hopewdm on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DQb1n1rkWQu
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/36308530-hopewdm-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/056b97581e.jpg
- **Posted:** 2025-10-30T13:25:03.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** HOPE (@HopeWDM) — https://gondola.cc/HopeWDM

## Caption

In 2020, I felt God call me to move to California from North Carolina in the middle of the pandemic. I had a desire to cultivate a heart of worship within a local church community and help other worship leaders do the same. 

I came on staff at a local church in San Francisco for a year, then a church in the South LA area for another four. Though God did amazing things, by fall 2023, the life I knew started to fall apart, and I went through a deeply painful next two years. My daily experience was a reminder of a life I no longer lived. As I prayerfully looked at the remaining pieces of my life, I chose to step away from my role at my previous church and consider where God was leading me next.

In summer 2025, Alyssa Conley came across my resume and reached out about a position at Hope. Throughout the interview process, I felt God give me a peace that was so unique. Despite never envisioning the Midwest to be a place I would live, I felt like I was experiencing the “peace that surpasses understanding.”

I said yes to joining the Hope family and started my journey to Iowa. In the previous two years, I had lost almost every material possession, so I moved to West Des Moines with a car full of clothes and my guitars to start a new life.

In my short time at Hope, I have experienced a community that loves so well. People have welcomed me as family, and it’s allowed me to experience a sense of peace and hope for my life in the aftermath of all the heartache and pain. 

Being at Hope has helped me realize that God’s redemptive plan for the broken things in our lives doesn’t always turn out the way we think. To have gone from the South to the West Coast and now to the Midwest is a story only God could write. I never would have dreamt these things for myself, but God is so kind in how he authors and perfects our stories. I’ve also realized what meaningful suffering is. Jesus is known as a man who is “acquainted with grief.” Yet, his suffering was meaningful in that he fulfilled what he was sent to do. God never wastes a hurt or a pain, and I am grateful I am a living testimony of that truth.

Joshua M.
#HopeStories

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## Credits

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## Tags

hopestories

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