Originally written for byFaith Magazine by Adam MacInnis. Ava Ligh is Campus Staff with RUF at Columbia University.
What started Ava Ligh on the path to salvation and a job in campus ministry? A middle school crush and a white lie.
Ligh immigrated to the United States from Taiwan when she was 8 years old. Her family was atheistic by default, but throughout middle school and high school, there was a Christian boy she was smitten with. Every year he would invite her to a youth outreach, and every year she went. She had an interest in the boy. God wasn’t on her radar.
At 18, Ligh left her Los Angeles home to attend Columbia University, but the summer after her freshman year she returned home and went to that annual outreach one more time. When her friend asked her what she thought of it, she didn’t want him to think he had wasted his time so she told him it made a lot of sense.
He was so elated at her response that she knew she had made a mistake. While he assumed she had made a spiritual decision, she was still as lost as ever.