Liz Young is back in the Flathead Valley after a 16-year absence.

Young, who previously worked as a computer support specialist for Flathead County from 1989 to 1993, returned this month to take over as pastor of Church of the Nazarene in Columbia Falls.

Born in San Francisco, Young came to the Flathead originally in 1972 at age 22 to teach guitar and work at a cafe in Bigfork. She's come a long way since then.

Young, 60, assumed the pastorship after the church's last permanent pastor left a year ago. She has been the associate pastor of a Nazarene church in Victor for the past three years.

Prior to that, Young had never thought about being a pastor. She said she came to know the Lord Jesus on a personal level in 1984.

"God miraculously changed my life," she said. "It was a year of miracles.

"God dealt with a lot of angers in my life. ... I was so excited about God and the faith. The whole year was like, ‘Wow'! I realized God cared about us as individuals."

Young was working for a software company in Missoula in 2007 when the company let everyone go and shut its doors.

She didn't know what she was going to do, but her pastor, John Capen, asked her to be the church's associate pastor.

"It was a real shock. It [being a pastor] had never occurred to me," she said, noting that she had thought about being a missionary and made two two-week trips to St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1996 and 1997 with evangelical nondenominational mission groups. Prior to becoming an associate pastor, she was giving home Bible studies and "just really wanting to share my faith with people," she said.

Recently, Young felt "it was time to step out" and submitted her two-weeks' notice to the Victor church in May. The next day the door opened to fill in temporarily at the Columbia Falls church. "I've been filling in since the middle of June," she said. "It all kind of fell into place ever so gradually."

Young, who's living in a basement apartment below the church at 172 Pine St. in Columbia Falls, plays guitar for services in addition to teaching or preaching for a small congregation of around 20 people.

She shared how she lived "some pretty wild years" during a five-year stint in Seattle. "I had tried to find help in all of the ‘normal' directions of drinking, drugs and sex." During this time she gave birth to a daughter, now 34. Today she also has a 3-year-old granddaughter.

As far as the future, "I just go from day to day. I just really have a desire to encourage people in their faith that God can help them and wants to."

Reporter Caleb Soptelean may be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at csoptelean@dailyinterlake.com.