Welcome everyone to my homepage/bio via Adventures In Missions! This site and the World Race homesite are going to be the most important places for me for the next year and some change. I will be traveling all around the world getting involved in a number of different types of ministry and servanthood and this will be my main vehicle of staying in touch with my family and supporters. Please get used to this site and visit it regularly. From here you can keep up with my blogs, see what the Lord is doing in my and my teammates lives, find out how to spread this news to others, contact me, and also to give prayerfully, financially or spiritually to myself and to AIM. The blogs are the heart and soul of these sites because they are so vital to staying in constant communication with everyone who is following the desires of the World Race, its participants and leaders alike. As many of you know, another crucial component is to build/continue relationships with my supporters and I am continually striving to think of creative and useful ways to let my supporters know how I’m doing and how they can support take a part in this incredible service to the Lord. Thank you so much for choosing to serve with me, its a very humbling honor.
My approximate bio is as follows… I’m 24 and graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi in December of 2005 with a major in Geography and minor in Biology. I’m actually not a cat fan but my roomates and I rescued the bundle of love pictured after Katrina. Hammocks are undoubtedly my favorite man-made craft of all time. Sunsets are my favorite God creation. I have a variety of interests including reading, camping, playing Ultimate Frisbee, fishing, eating with friends, waterskiing, and a host of other outdoors and watersports activities. I recently decided to start learning the harmonica. I’ve got a half sister named Meredith who thinks I’m the coolest thing since sliced bread. I love the beach. I say “Ma’am” and “Sir” and “y’all” and hold doors for people and other things of that sort, it’s just how I was raised. I’m going to be a firefighter one day.
I grew up in Columbus, MS and was blessed with an encouraging, supportive family and literally dozens of other people who would give anything to adopt me as their own. Despite my Christian upbringing (which involved a Christening in a Presbyterian church, a Catholic elementary school, Confirmation in the Methodist church and my father marrying into a Southern Baptist family), I did not meet Christ until I was a freshman in college. Moving to Hattiesburg for college was an incredible decision because I found an amazing spiritual family that discipled and nurtured me. I worked for a couple of summers at Gulfshore Baptist Assembly in Pass Christian, MS and really loved it. I’ve done a small mission trip to a poor area of the Mississippi Delta and went to Belize for about two weeks to build a ropes course. I also did a study abroad program across Great Britain. I thoroughly enjoyed serving for two years on the college leadership team at First Baptist in Hattiesburg.
After graduation I did the one thing I’ve been saying I would never do since I was a little kid. I got a desk job. I took a job in New Orleans as an environmental specialist with the government about 7 months after Katrina. It was an extremely difficult job assignment and I am but one of many thousands of people who have had their lives changed in a very dramtic way because of my experience. In the end, the branch I was working for was a phenomenal group of people who had the right mission in mind and I still adamantly defend the majority of the work that is taking place, but it was just not the place where I needed to be. I took a leap of faith just under a year later and quit my job. It was very hard but it was the best decision I’ve ever made. The WorldRace is desinged for people who are searching for themselves just as diligently as they are trying to use what they already know is theirs, the love of Christ. That’s why I’m so pumped about this… because I know the last thing I want is life is to be satisfied or complacent. Its quite daunting and I make no pretenses of being enveloped in boldness; its plain scary but the WorldRace is going to change me in ways I can’t even dream of and that is exciting. My most sincere prayer, however, is that what I do matters.
