I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself to you. My name is Lawrie Hudson; I have been a Christian since 1973 and have been involved in two churches over the years, Westerhailes Baptist Church and Livingston Baptist Church Dedridge where I am currently involved. In Dedridge I am part of the leadership team and as a leader I am responsible for various areas of ministry including, Multi-Media, Worship, Administration as well as the general spiritual oversight of the fellowship. In my work life I have been involved in Telecommunications and IT in various roles including Service Engineer, Service Manager and latterly as a Project Manager. My last role as a PM ended in June 2007. At this point I began a journey with God that I believe was designed to get me to this point in my life and service.

The journey began with a general unease with my spiritual life and a searching for direction. One of my friends in the church asked me if I had heard about the vacancy in ECM and would I be interested, my initial reaction was, I don't think so but I will pray about it, I confess that my prayer was not what you could call fervent. I had no experience of this type of organisation and this type of work was not something I had been greatly involved in over the years. He came back some time later and asked again if I had considered the position. I confess again that my reaction was somewhat similar to the first time. He came back a third time and gave me the email address of the Chairman of ECM, (Graham Scholefield) suggesting that I could contact him if I was interested.

I decided to send him an email, which must have seemed quite weird. Here was this guy writing to him who hadn't a clue what he was doing but was asking if he could meet the chairman to discuss the possibilities with him. He graciously accepted my request; maybe it was more out of curiosity than anything else! While all of this was going on I had a conversation with another guy in my church who was telling me about his upcoming trip to Brazil to work with Mission Direct to build houses for the people who live in the favelas (slums). To cut a long story short, I decided to pursue the possibility of going with him to Brazil. It was wonderful how God made it possible and supplied all that I needed to get me there.

Looking back at what I learned from my time in Brazil convinces me of God's perfect timing - God needed to get me to Brazil to prepare me for what he had in store for me in the future. Back to the meeting with Graham, we agreed that we would meet on the 24th of October after my trip to Brazil and Graham's to Russia. Graham and I eventually met on the 24th and began to search together for God's leading for both ECM and myself. As Graham and I spent time together that day I began to get a sense of God's leading but nothing definite. At the end of the meeting we agreed to go away and pray about the situation and that we would talk again.

Graham called me a few weeks later to ask if I would meet with two of the other Directors, this was arranged for the 3rd of December. During my meeting with Agnes and David I began to get a real sense of calling to the work and came away convinced that God's hand was on the situation and that if I wasn't invited to join ECM then I would be really confused. The situation was left with the Directors to discuss and pray about and I continued to seek God.

On the 8th of January I was called by ECM but more importantly it was the next step in this incredible journey of faith that God has called me to.

I would ask for your ongoing prayers as I seek to fulfil God's call on my life and make decisions under His guidance and as I engage with the good people of ECM.