I grew up in the small mountain town of Bend, Oregon. It has become a small city over the years but we all still like to think we live in a little town. I am fortunate to have a wonderful family who have always supported and help me along in my journey with Jesus and through life. We spent a lot of time in the outdoors, hiking, sailing, skiing, camping and just about anything else we could find to do away from civilization.
I have spent the rest of my 28 years looking for new ways and new people to do the same with. I love meeting new people and seeing new places. I went on a couple of mission trips in high school and loved it. But life happened and I didn’t prioritize getting back out into the mission field. I worked for the Forest Service building trails and fighting fire, in the summers and skiing and making coffee in the winter at the local ski resort. And, spent a month in Europe traveling with a buddy. After four years of that, I found a small Marine Technology program at a small community college and decided that maybe I would go to college after all.
I moved onto a boat on Whidbey Island in Washington and pent two years learning all about boats from building them to navigating them. I met a friend there who was from Alaska who talked me into going up there to go fishing for the summer out of Petersburg.
The next three months consisted of working 16-20 hours a day for four days and then a little bit of a break while going back to town for supplies and coming back out to the fishing grounds. It was an awesome summer, I made some good money, fell asleep standing up once and got to do some traveling around Alaska. Then I went back to the ski resort in the winters and started working for Outward Bound in the summers.
Working for OB I got to be a part of a very diverse community that mostly had deferent views than mine on everything, but were very open and respectful about talking about their differences with me and each other. I was really able to grow and temper what I really believed, and what was truly important to me and what was just religion that I didn’t really care that much about. I also realized I love living in community. It just makes so much more sense.
I continued working at the mountain and doing different things in the summer. But still not finding “what I want to do with my life”. Then I had two different friends go on WR race and the more I talked to them the more I new that this was for me. I had looked at and considered other trips but they never seemed to really fit me and how the Lord has built me. And so here we are 🙂
