Friends Describe U.S. Tourist Murdered in Israel as Deeply Spiritual

Dec. 20, 2010 — -- Friends describe Kristine Luken, the American missionary murdered in Israel, as a deeply religious woman who felt most at home in Israel.

"She has always from the first day I met her had a love for the Jewish people. She felt nowhere more at home than in Israel," Naomi Harralson, a friend and former colleague of Luken, told ABCNews.com. "Her relationship with God was everything to her."

It was a relationship so meaningful to Luken that she left her job at Patrick Henry College in 2009 to move to the United Kingdom to work with an evangelical Christian ministry called the Church's Ministry among Jewish people.

"It was not an easy process for her, but she was so confident that it was what she was supposed to do," Harralson said.

Harralson was Luken's boss at the Virginia college where Luken worked assisting with the university's accreditation process. Prior to that job, Luken worked at the Department of Education.

When Luken, 44, moved to the U.K., she and Harralson kept in touch by emailing inspirational quotes to each other. The last quote that Luken sent Harralson a few weeks ago now haunts her. Luken wrote to Harralson, "Remember to search out the goodness of God in the face of tragedy."

Few could have predicted the tragedy that awaited Luken. On Sunday, her body was found in a forest outside of Jerusalem. Her hands were tied behind her back. She'd been stabbed to death.

Luken and Kaye Susan Wilson, a friend she met on a trip to Poland with her Christian ministry, had been hiking together.

Wilson survived the stabbing attack by playing dead. She said that they were attacked by two Arab men.

"It all happened so fast. They came out and attacked us," Wilson told Israeli media as she recovered in an Israeli hospital after reportedly suffering 12 stab wounds Saturday while hiking in a forest near Jerusalem. "It was clear they came to kill."