Jamaican born actress turned Fitness and Life Coach Denise Hunt will be among the featured presenters at the WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod) South Central District GROW Conference, to be held at the Abiding Word Church in Houston, Texas from Thursday February 3 to Friday February 4.
The two day event brings together WELS pastors, teachers and lay leaders from across the South Central US regions of the synod – including Texas- with the aim of fostering growth and greater understanding of the various roles within the church through a variety of presentations, workshops and fellowship opportunities.
Hunt, a born again Christian, media practitioner and former thespian is best known for her small but memorable role in the box office hit How Stella Got Her Groove Back, opposite Academy Award nominee Angela Bassett and Taye Diggs. She will deliver her presentation – Culture in Christianity and The Lutheran Experience- An Immigrant’s Perspective– on the second and final day of the event.
According to Hunt, her presentation will be based on personal experience and will chronicle some of the many challenges she encountered when she immigrated to the USA from Jamaica after becoming a born again Christian in her native homeland.
“So many people speak of the culture shock that envelops them when they arrive in the US as an immigrant from a region like the Caribbean,” she says. “But the stories that often go untold are those about the spiritual and religious culture shock that many experience as well. For me in particular, after accepting Christ and embracing my faith in Jamaica, I then arrived here only to discover an interesting set of challenges… Namely that many of the religious cultural practices I was used to in Jamaica were completely different in the USA. Accepting and embracing the fact that we are all Christians but may take very different approaches to how we choose to worship was a whole new journey.”
She believes her interactive presentation- which is already one of the most eagerly anticipated at the event- will help attendees form an appreciation for the need to recognize and be respectful of the differences between themselves and Christians from other cultures.
For Hunt, her appearance at the high profile event is another step on a remarkable personal and spiritual journey that began in the inner city community of Allman Town in Kingston Jamaica where she was born.
Raised in deep poverty and suffering for many years from the low self esteem that she says often accompanies being born “ black, female and poor” in countries like Jamaica, she embraced dual careers in acting and media, quickly rising to become one of the most popular and recognizable women in Caribbean entertainment .
At the height of her success, she was the host of two top rated television shows on Jamaica’s TVJ network, as well as an in demand stage actor moving quickly from one award winning theatrical production to another. This lead to her audition and subsequent casting for her breakthrough role in How Stella Got Her Groove Back.
For all her success however, she felt, in her own words, “Like an imposter…. Like I wasn’t deserving. Something was missing and I couldn’t figure out what. And I needed to know fast or I thought I was literally going to die.”
She sought help and once she did, things turned around dramatically. She became a born again Christian in 2012 having attained her Fitness Coaching Certification in 2010. Her Certified Life Coaching qualification followed in 2019. She quit acting to focus on physical and mental wellness for both herself and others, which she continues to do at her company SizzleFit Faith and Fitness in Austin, Texas.
It is the blending of her two life passions- faith and fitness- that put her on her path to her upcoming second appearance at the GROW Conference.
In 2018, with no experience and on very short notice, she entered the SCW (formerly Sara’s City Workout) Dallas Mania Idol Competition- a contest among fitness trainers giving presentations – and won. Already professionally engaged in fitness training with seniors and the elderly at her job, she took that platform and her fitness skills into her church. She subsequently toured much of the southwest USA giving workshops and workout sessions to many seniors in Christian communities and elsewhere, as well as training other fitness professionals to do the same. Her success and growing reputation attracted the attention of WELS, leading to her first appearance at the GROW conference in 2019 at which she did a lecture fitness presentation targeted at seniors. The opportunity to present for the second time at this year’s event subsequently followed.
Denise Hunt also hosts Random Thoughts Live every Thursday at 8pm EST on her instagram site – @denisesizzlefithunt.
