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Sarah Latta

LattaSarah.jpg“Even though I had grown up in the church, I didn’t understood how the Gospel could transform me and the rest of life,” says Sarah Latta. “I didn’t understand that my role in life was to be a steward of all of God’s creation, natural and cultural. My relationships with CCO staff members allowed me to come to a transforming understanding of the story of redemption in the Bible. As I’ve engaged with life, I’ve come to understand that Jesus truly sustains all things. In Him, I have hope that all things will at some point be fully renewed and restored.”

Sarah first connected to the CCO during her first year at Malone University, when CCO staff member Marcia Everett taught her College Experience class. “Marcia shared her life and home with her students, so I soon met her husband, Steve. I attended a Bible study training retreat they facilitated, and I attended Jubilee every year and then many years after I graduated. It was always so encouraging to see real people living real life in radically different ways because of their faith.”

Sarah participated in the CCO-sponsored Ocean City Beach Project between her sophomore and junior years, which she says “was extremely formative in my understanding of God’s work in the world. It has been pivotal for me to understand that God loves His Creation and was unwilling to abandon all He had made. Because of His great love for the cosmos, He sent Jesus to become like us to redeem us. That has given me much hope as I move out toward the world I live in.”

Today, Sarah and her husband, Brett, are raising their three children in Delaware, Ohio, near Brett’s alma mater, Ohio Wesleyan University. “Brett committed his life to Christ through the CCO ministry at OWU and was involved for all four of his years at school, so our faith has provided many common tenets and priorities that have served to hold us together in our marriage and parenting,” Sarah says. “We educate our children at home, and the understanding that all of life belongs to and is being redeemed lovingly by God profoundly influences how we teach them.”

The Lattas are also active in their church and their community as a whole. “Because of my experience in church as a teen, and the commitment that the CCO helped us develop to the local church, we have been involved in three church plants in Delaware,” Sarah says. “We serve as Sunday school teachers, small group leaders and various other roles. I am currently enrolled in a two-year pastoral/lay leadership training program to become better equipped to serve our church and community. I am extremely excited about our current church, because it echoes the CCO vision. It encompasses a love for the Triune God with a desire to serve our community and city, seek justice, reach out to college students and live out our love for Christ between Sundays, not just on Sundays. Although I am not an outgoing evangelist, we have befriended families in our neighborhood and have led several to a new or closer walk with God. Parenting has provided a common context for sharing life and faith with others.”

Sarah continues to point to her college years as foundational for the way she lives her life today. “CCO staff provided pastoral care and discipleship during my college years. They helped me to develop a vision for life that would stand up in the real world, and inform all of my decisions. They gave me a framework through which to understand the brokenness of the world and to hope for better things.

“If the CCO had not been at Malone, I think that my faith would have remained largely segmented from the rest of my life. The CCO introduced me to a faith understanding that has enabled me to discover Jesus’ love for all His creation. I don’t know that I would have been able to make sense of the world, the beauty and pain together, if I hadn’t been shown a Jesus big enough to embrace it all. Because of the scope of redemptive history, I have come to know Jesus in a way that challenges me to embrace the world like He does. Hopefully, I will continue to discover more of His heart for me and for the world around me as I continue to follow Him.”