Nona Jones is Head of Faith-Based Partnerships at Facebook. It’s her job to teach faith communities how to stay connected and engaged through social media. As a Christian, Nona loves helping churches across the country do “digital discipleship” while also assisting her husband pastor a church in Florida. But Nona’s life wasn’t always so great. Her childhood was filled with loneliness, neglect, and all kinds of abuse: physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual. Nona was so broken by her experiences that she tried to take her own life twice. Things turned around when a friend invited Nona to church in the sixth grade. As she experienced unconditional love and acceptance for the first time in her life, Nona began to do better in school, eventually earning a full-ride scholarship to the University of Florida. After initially pursuing a medical degree, she switched to Communications. After college, Nona bounced around a few different jobs, first with a broadcasting company, then Nationwide Insurance, and a utility company in Florida. Eventually, she found a job she really loved and saw herself doing for a long time at Pace Center for Girls. But then she heard God say: “this assignment is over.” Nona Jones turned in her resignation without having a new job to go to but being unemployed didn’t last long. She’ll tell more in this episode about the story of getting a random phone call from Facebook and what she does in her role there. Nona’s learned from her traumatic past that nothing bad can define us, if we allow God to use it. She’s especially aware of the importance of community and sharing our stories with people we trust. Of course, that’s not easy to do right now as the pandemic continues, but Nona is confident that we can have hope anyway. Her story is one of overcoming an incredibly difficult start in life and not letting brokenness stop her from living out her purpose. ______ Get a copy of Nona’s books from the links below: Success from the Inside Out: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07PQ4Z88N/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 From Social Media to Social Ministry: https://www.amazon.com/Social-Media-Ministry-Digital-Discipleship-ebook/dp/B081MZQV78 Love Nona’s story and want to know more? Feel free to connect with her. Nona Jones’ website: https://www.nonajones.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NonaNotNora Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/nonanotnora Special thanks for this episode: Nona Jones, Antwan Steele, Josh Batson, Jenn Lazala Support Faith Collides podcast now on https://www.buymeacoffee.com/faithcollides Or with a review—>  http://bit.ly/FaithC0llid3s Faith Collides podcast is hosted by Grace Huang from Lux Mundi.  More information: www.lxmundi.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/faithcollides/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/faithcollides/support