Hi, I’m Jake and am from Gresham Oregon.
I just graduated from Gresham Union High School and plan on moving on to college after the WorldRace. I like to snowboard on Mt. Hood and spend time with my friends.
For the last three summers, I’ve been a part of a team from our church that travels to Tuba City Arizona to serve the Navajo Nation. It’s hard to believe what a different world the reservation can be—high unemployment, little opportunity, and very little hope. Many of the homes don’t even have electricity or indoor plumbing.
Our days in Tuba started with morning prayers and breakfast at 6:30 and then out the door in teams to work on community projects—hanging sheetrock in homes and replacing roofs, cutting and hauling firewood (a fireplace is the only source of heat for homes without electricity), to building a workshop where tribe members can learn skills to help them improve their economic prospects.
In the evenings, our teams shifted from manual labor to spiritual labor by providing a Vacation Bible School program each evening for the community’s children, culminating in a family movie night on the last evening. I’ve attached some pictures of last summer’s trip to Tuba.
One of the challenges of working in Tuba is that the summer projects last only 10 days at the most, which is not enough time to develop relationships with the people we served. Getting to spend three months at a time in Nicaragua, South Africa and Thailand will give me the chance to see what God is doing and what He wants me to be doing on a deeper level that’s not possible in a 10 day visit.
I’m looking forward to the challenges that I and my team will face and the adventures that God is taking us on.
Jake
This is the 2014 Tuba Team learning how to build trusses for the workshop. That’s me in the middle in the grey shirt and sunglasses.
