In September 2022, Katie Moessner was attending Wednesday night supper at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Nashville when a fellow church member approached her with a request: her friend Mary Trapnell, founder and executive director of Nashville Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition (NAHT), wanted to start a bakery that sold petit fours as a social enterprise for NAHT. Moessner’s friend at church thought Moessner might offer them some tips. 

She turned to Moessner for good reason. Over 14 years, Moessner had perfected her recipe for petit fours — bite-size cakes that are a staple of bridal and baby showers in Moessner’s home state of Louisiana. When she moved to Nashville in 2003, she discovered that no bakery sold the kind of cakes she had grown up enjoying, so she started making them herself. Before long, she had turned her lifelong love of baking and art into a home business, providing high-end boutiques, celebrity baby showers, and birthday teas with the beautiful little confections. 

The moment Moessner heard about NAHT, she recognized God’s hand at work. 

“For me, it was like the Holy Spirit quickened my spirit,” she said. “And it was as if God was whispering to me, ‘I haven’t forgotten.’” 

As a college student discipling teen girls, Moessner dreamed of one day serving children in the developing world. But faithfully following God led to her marrying her husband, John, and building a family of three children in the Nashville suburbs. 

“I thought I would be working with kids in Sudan,” Moessner said, “but there I was in the private school world of Brentwood.”

As her children grew, opportunities to disciple young women sprang up, and Moessner slowly developed a small group to lead. Then, one by one, those young women married and moved away. As her own children became more independent, Moessner began to ask God what was next. When she heard what NAHT wanted to create, she saw immediately how God had equipped her: 

“The whole time, he was having me develop a product that he had a greater purpose for,” she said.  

Now Moessner serves as the creative director for Sweet Daisy Petit Four Shoppe, where she directs the kitchen, trains and mentors the staff of trafficking survivors, and develops partnerships with members of the Nashville community. 

From Surviving to Thriving

NAHT uses a four-fold approach to enact their mission: 

• Rescue, recovering trafficked women and girls from the field.
• Restore, providing wraparound support for survivors, including addiction recovery programs, therapies, and Bible study.
• Resource, offering a one-year paid internship with Sweet Daisy, with discipleship at the core.
• Recognize, educating schools and communities on trafficking prevention and detection. 

Every department has a “thriver” on staff, someone who has been rescued and restored from human trafficking. Moessner said the thrivers keep NAHT “survivor-informed and, when appropriate, survivor-led,” which proved critical during the first year of developing the SEEDS program, the one-year, discipleship-centered Sweet Daisy internship. The thrivers helped leadership learn to anticipate the learning curve of working in the bakery and the universal struggle of discipleship. 

“At the very point of wanting to give up, we have the opportunity to surrender our deficit and give it to Jesus, or we hit the exit button and we escape,” Moessner said. “In the SEEDS program, we come alongside these new disciples to help them recognize the invitation to let him into our weakness, and that’s where he is strong.” 

Each morning in the Sweet Daisy kitchen begins with prayer and Bible study, led by Moessner. Then, on the industrial side of the kitchen, the team, comprised of two SEEDS interns and two thrivers, moves through Moessner’s seven-step process for petit-four perfection: baking, transferring, butter-creaming, cutting, glazing, decorating, and boxing. 

On the other side of the bright kitchen, a long table, fully-stocked cupboards, and the aroma of vanilla, almond, and chocolate welcome NAHT program members, employees, volunteers, and visitors to sit and snack while they chat about their lives or ask for prayer. At any given moment, Moessner or her team might pause to pray with those who have entered, offer them words of encouragement, or present an impromptu testimony to potential partners, a skill which they have honed with frequent practice. 

“A lot of community takes place in that kitchen,” Moessner says. “It’s almost like a discipleship lab. The idea is that after one year, each intern will have a more confident knowledge of who she is in Jesus, rooted in his Word, with a new understanding of her identity in him. And from there she would launch to whatever the Holy Spirit has next for her with a fresh paradigm about what it means to go to work and participate in a community as a disciple, spreading his love and hope everywhere she goes, through excellent work and excellent character, but also by living in the power of the Holy Spirit and in an intimate relationship with Jesus.”

Deeper Purpose and Identity

Now, rather than relocating halfway around the world, Moessner’s 20-minute daily commute to NAHT headquarters brings her face-to-face with the brutal reality of human trafficking, a crisis plaguing the entire globe. In the last three years, Moessner has learned that at the core of human trafficking is the question of identity. 

“If you don’t know the truth of your value, worth, and dignity, then you can be convinced otherwise. At NAHT, we believe that all roads of justice and healing lead to Jesus. So that identity piece is going to be founded in God’s Word about who he says we are, the value, worth, and dignity we have simply because we’re his and made by him.”

After just two years of operation, Sweet Daisy has made its mark in Nashville, with high-profile clients like the Nashville Predators and the Tennessee Titans. But the impact of the program — and Moessner’s role in it — has made an even more significant impact in the lives of its participants. 

Molly Hogan, a thriver on staff with NAHT said, “My mentorship with Katie has been a powerful example of Christ-centered discipleship. Through her obedience to Christ, I’ve learned that mentorship is not about control or instruction alone, but about walking together in faith, pointing one another back to Jesus, and trusting him to do the refining work. Her example has shown me how God uses authentic, loving relationships to grow his people.” 

Likewise, Lana Hendrix, the first graduate of the SEEDS program and now full-time kitchen manager for Sweet Daisy said, “The SEEDS program gave deeper purpose to my time with NAHT by helping me see my work as a calling, not just a role. It strengthened my faith, leadership, and intentionality, making my experience both meaningful and transformative.”

With these lovely, delicate treats, both the creators and consumers receive a message of hope. Each petit four sale supports NAHT’s mission to rescue, restore, and resource women and children from the bondage of human trafficking and addiction, and each box includes their motto, “Go ahead . . . get your hopes up.” In answering God’s call to Sweet Daisy, Moessner has tasted the sweetness of a hope fulfilled.

Amy Barham is a writer who lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Katie Moessner is her sister.