Ready to Be Christ’s Witness

(Photo/Lauren Buffamante Photography)

Trained as a teacher, Emily Kahn loved her job, but it didn’t offer her opportunities to share Jesus. Now she’s a cadet at the College for Officer Training.

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” —2 Corinthians 4:18 (BSB)

Emily Kahn grew up in The Salvation Army as a typical officers’ kid but didn’t feel a calling to be an officer herself.

The daughter of Majors Elijah and Valerie Kahn, she graduated from Mount Vernon Nazarene University in Ohio, where she studied early childhood education. Emily loved being a third-grade teacher and a reading instructor after graduation, but something was missing.

“I had times when I would come back home and say, ‘Is this really it? Is this life? I work with people in the real world, I come home, and that’s all I’m doing.’ I was serving people through teaching, but was I really sharing Jesus with other people? That was a question that really stirred in my mind and my heart,” Emily, now 26, said.

“A lot of people were talking to me about ministry, but I didn’t feel like I wanted to do that with my life.”

Emily also missed her parents, who had left Ohio to serve in their new appointment in Massachusetts. Except for the people she met serving at the nondenominational church she attended, she was alone.

Life-changing moment

In 2024, her mother called and asked Emily to join the Kahns at the Old Orchard Beach Camp Meetings in Maine. Emily had attended the camp meetings with her parents several times as a child but had not been back since age 12.

She went to the Sunday morning service and remembers being “flooded with emotions” that she couldn’t explain. She was happy at her nondenominational church, but God was calling her back to The Salvation Army.

“I felt like I was home,” she said. “I felt very much at peace.”

When Emily returned to Ohio, she started attending the Columbus East Main Corps, along with her regular church.

“During that time, the Lord just really started to open up doors,” Emily said. “He showed me through the Word, the people around me, and the corps officers I had at the time what I should do.

“I had people coming up to me and talking to me more about ministry, and the Lord just spoke to me that way. I really had to sit down and have a talk with Him and figure it out. And eventually I did.”

The volunteer opportunities she found at the Columbus East Main Corps to help the poor and needy harkened back to her teenage years.

“I wanted to serve people and find ways to talk about Jesus,” she said.

New challenges await

A single cadet, Emily showed up on August 18 with the rest of her Rescue sessionmates to begin two years of seminary and officer training at the College for Officer Training (CFOT) in Suffern, New York.

“I’m very much looking forward to being around people who have the same mentality and connecting with people who are about my age,” she said. “I’m hoping to have learning experiences and also looking forward to pushing myself out of my comfort zone.”

Cadet Emily Kahn is excited to be at the College for Officer Training in Suffern, New York. The former third-grade teacher wants to share her love of Jesus and use her gifts to serve the Lord. (Photo/Lauren Buffamante Photography)

Each session of new cadets is incredibly diverse. There are would-be officers of various ages, races, backgrounds, and education. Learning together with such a mix of individuals helps teach the cadets how to witness and share Christ with different people. Emily is biracial; her father is from Liberia and her mother is white.

“We’re all learning so much from each other already,” Emily said in her first full day at the CFOT.

“I think God gives us all these different cultures that we can use to worship Him and also to learn from each other and share about Him. It’s a really beautiful thing. I’m really thankful and expectant to see what that’s going to look like while I’m at the CFOT. I’m also excited to see that diversity in the real world.”

The gift of hospitality

Once at her first appointment, she wants to make sharing the gospel message a priority.

“I want to find ways to share Jesus with others, forming connections with the people who come through the doors and helping the people around me,” she said.

Emily, who worked at Camp Tecumseh in New Jersey this past summer before reporting for officer training, brings a wealth of skills and spiritual gifts to the CFOT, including organization, teaching, and hospitality. Between the Columbus East Main Corps and her nondenominational church, she helped with young adult ministry and children’s programming, led worship events, and hosted small groups.

“I love anything to do with hospitality and having people in my home and just encouraging them,” she said. “I think when it comes to being able to share Jesus with someone, it begins with having a relationship with them and a good friendship.”