Episode #301 — Two camels, limited supplies, and no compass. An internationally-acclaimed fashion model on the run for her life across the Sahara Desert – with no certainty as to exactly where she was. It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood feature film, but it’s the completely true story of Kristina Hurrell.

When the adventure of a lifetime went terribly wrong, Kristina fled the Bedouin camp she’d been brought to and began an unforgettable journey across the most forbidding landscape on earth. Did she believe she’d ever return home?

“Well, I hoped with my father being a squadron leader in the Royal Air Force, I hoped I inherited some of his navigating abilities and I could find a way back. But I didn’t know where I was. I didn’t know if we were in the heart of the Sahara. Should I just go north?”

“But I fell on my knees, and I knew my only hope was God. I knew it. So I prayed and prayed and prayed. ‘Father, please. Just stay with me. Guide me. Protect me. I need to be filled up with your courage and tenacity.”

The extraordinary escape ended in safety and a joyful return, but Kristina says she learned so much from the harrowing experience.

“On the way back was the most amazing experience. I truly and honestly felt I heard music in the desert. I would be lying back on the camel. We’d be walking in the night with the stars above my head, and I’d hear – when the wind blows through the sand you can actually hear sounds like music. And the Lord would speak to me. I would be walking, and I was exhausted with the feeling of no water in the middle of the Sahara with no compass. So it’s an amazing testimony of God’s grace that I actually made it!”


Kristina Hurrell is an intrepid world traveler, a celebrated fashion model, an actress & now authors Captivated: An Adventure in Faith.

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On the Road with Kristina Hurrell