GMHC 2025

Emelia was born and grew up in Istanbul, Turkey. Her parents served on the field for 40 years and she knew from a young age she also wanted to work overseas as a missionary. Her first GMHC was in 2003 as a freshman nursing student— only a few months after moving to the States for the first time! Her original plan was to spend four years in America to get her Bachelor’s in nursing and then move to Africa and live in a mud hut and serve people there for the rest of her life. God had other plans and kept telling her to wait. In the meantime, she became a nurse practitioner and after being in the States 14 years instead of four, she moved to the Middle East where she worked in refugee and internally displaced peoples camps with an international non-governmental organization (NGO). Emelia worked with people with disabilities in these camps for five years before moving to a large Arab metropolis where there are almost no other missionaries to continue ministry and NGO medical work. She's been residing in this city of 12 million since 2023 and is thankful for coffee shops and to not be living in a mud hut.