Get to know Dawn
Dawn Hill grew up in Southeast Alaska, surrounded by the beauty of God's creation. She graduated summa cum laude from a state college in Oregon with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication and a Psychology minor. After college, Dawn served the Lord as a missionary for two years in Japan, teaching conversational English, building relationships with her beloved Japanese church members and students, and sharing the gospel. She led English Bible Classes with her teaching partner, and while there learned so much from her Japanese Church about having a heart for those not yet alive in Christ and about the sweetness of Christian community and corporate prayer.
Upon returning to the States, the Lord led Dawn across the country to New York, where she attended a Calvary Chapel Ministry School, and then to Illinois so she could meet the earthly love of her life, Tim. They've been blessed to have been married more than 25 years now, and to have a son and a daughter. Dawn homeschooled her kids until their teen years, when God opened doors for them to attend their community high school, giving their dad a chance to teach them math and have lunch with them at school. Dawn and Tim are actively involved in the lives of many young adults that the Lord has brought into their lives, and they appreciate the support of their local church.
Dawn published her devotional book titled Journey into Trust in 2024 and has just released Early Rains, the first of two Bible study guides that go deeper into the topics of Joy, Hope, Beauty, Purpose & Trust, Relationships, God’s Love & Overcoming. Dawn taught high school level Literature and Creative Writing classes at her community’s Christian homeschool group for about 15 years. She served on the group’s board for several years and has coordinated church ministries from Pre-K - Kindergarten Sunday School to a Japanese outreach for the few years that a Japanese company operated in her community.
Over the years, Dawn has led numerous teen girls’ Bible studies, Women’s Bible studies, and college-aged small groups, or participated in studies led by other women. She is currently focusing on writing authentic encouragement in many forms, as well as leading small group Bible Studies with teens and college students from a variety of denominations in her home and through InterVarsity. Whether in a formal Bible study or not, Dawn is an avid lover of God’s Word and it is her delight to press in to seek and know the Lord better. With all her heart she hopes that you will come to know Jesus as you’re Lord and Savior! She would love it if one of her books or something she’s written helps draw you to Him.
You can find out more about her devotional and her Bible study here:
Journey into Trust Description: For Strength & Perspective you need Journey into Trust — The Hopeful Buttercup!
MY BACKSTORY / TESTIMONY
I trusted in Jesus to save me at age 5 when my pastor’s daughter shared the gospel with me in Metlakatla, Alaska, and I was baptized in the bay on an overcast chilly morning not long after that.
I didn’t really put Jesus first in my life until my sophomore year of college, though. I had strayed a lot in high school, and even though I continued to attend church regularly, I was living in sin. Every Sunday I was very convicted by the Holy Spirit about the life I was living outside of church, but I was in a serious relationship and was really caught in a cycle of sin. God is so merciful, however, and although I felt so much self-condemnation during my four years of sexual immorality, my heavenly Father never gave up on me. He worked in subtle, but sure ways, to reach me with His prevailing grace.
He finally opened my eyes to the truth about the relationship I was in and helped me break up with my boyfriend at age 20. And then He opened the door for me to travel to Europe and later Australia. Both trips were pivotal times in my spiritual growth where He challenged me to really know what I believed and why, and where He first gave me Christian friends who were living full on for the Lord.
He showed me that all the time that I’d been so miserable in my sin, He had “been afflicted” with me, as Isaiah 63:9 talks about. He also showed me that the joy and peace and purpose that I was experiencing with my new Christian friends was the life He had been longing to give me. He showed me His Father heart toward me and that He’d always loved me and had never forsaken me, because of what Jesus had done for me. He led me to repentance and rest; He restored my life. He called me to the mission field for two years after I graduated from college, and then about a year after that He led me to meet my husband Tim. He brought an Alaska girl to Oregon and then to Japan, in order to get her to Upstate New York and then Libertyville, IL where I met Tim at an Evangelical Free Church.
My relationship with Jesus truly is my lifeline. My kids were chronically and seriously ill for most of their lives, and it was so hard. God kept giving me promise after promise to help me cling to Him and to cling to hope when our circumstances looked hopeless. He kept me from drowning in depression during those years when toxic mold was poisoning all of us, but we didn’t know it. He kept leading our family step by step to find answers and eventually help for our kids. Then, just when both Kian and Corrie were finally getting better, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully it was caught early (another gift from God) and through much wrestling with Him, He helped me do the really difficult things in order to remove and radiate all the areas where there was macro-cancer cells. Through the last several years, the Lord gave me time and space to begin to write again and my times with Him and my times in His creation became Journey into Trust, and then became this website, and lately my EARLY RAINS Bible study. All of this truly has been a Journey into Trust for me, and I so hope everything I write will be used by the Holy Spirit to draw you to Jesus and into your own deeper journey into trust with God.
Forever Grateful for God’s Grace,
Dawn
