I was born in Lancaster, California in the fall of 1971. Because my father was in the US Army Corps of Engineers, we moved around every couple of years, calling places like Kentucky, North Carolina, Italy, Germany and Colorado home, all before third grade.
After my parents split and both remarried, we made the decision to move to Portland, Oregon when I was in junior high school. It was here that I started to really learn about God.
Life wasn’t easy, but often out of hardship comes blessing and faith can sprout and grow. I spent my junior year of high school in Tarlac, Philippines where I fell in love with culture, language and people of the world around me.
Back in Oregon, I finished high school and was baptized into Christ shortly after graduation, in 1989, and then rushed off to the University of Oregon to embark on my quest for knowledge and purpose.. Two years later, I left school with my best friend to move to Lubbock, Texas to study God’s word more intensly in the Adventures in Missions program at Sunset International Bible Institute.
Hindsight is 20/20. Looking back, I see God’s hand guiding me. As a child I had lived in Germany and Italy and then as a teen in the Philippines. I was studying Russian and International Relations (with a focus on Eastern Europe) in college, only to put that on hold half way through. Why? What was God preparing me for? What was He guiding me toward?
If you had asked me then, I never would have guessed. My heart was North East, never South. I even had a friend in college suggest that, in addition to the Russian and German I was already studying, that I take Spanish. It is a beautiful language, he said. You’re crazy, I replied.
I was the one who was crazy. In the blink of an eye, with a simple phrase spoken by one of the missionaries who came to present his field to the AIM students who were to soon travel to work as missionary apprentices, my life and my focus changed.
We are new in Toluca, Mexico, he said. We don’t yet know what we are doing, let alone what the AIM students will do. That will be up to you to figure out. You will be “pioneers.” Pioneers. Wow. That word spoke to my heart in a way I still do not understand. I wanted desperately to be a pioneer, to chart my own path through unknown territory, to make an impact in a way that only I could design.
Suddenly Eastern Europe was gone. Russian swirled through my head and I tried to learn Spanish and prepared to cross a landborder instead of an ocean.
What can I say now? It was not just a two year mission God had prepared for me. 27 years later, I have only recently come back to the US temporarily to take care of several pressing issues. I have been married for 25 years to a wonderful, passionate, loving Mexican man who loves Christ more than he loves me! We have three amazing children who are now grown and embarking on their own adventures, as they stray from the nest to figure out what God has prepared for them.
Some of the highlights of my journey include:
- Becoming a Christian, August 1989
- Graduating from the Insituto Latinoamericano de Estudios Bíblicos, a branch of Sunset International Bible Institute, July 2000
- Getting my certificate of Biblical Greek, July 2001
- Working with ILEB in many directive, teaching and administrative roles throughout the past 20 years.
- Getting my Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies/Cultural Psychology through Oregon State University, June 2015
- Speaking at many womens’ events in the US and Mexico, including the first and second National Womens’ Conferences in Toluca, Mexico in 2015 and 2017
- Receiving the Oregon Christian Writers’ Cascade Award for unpublished non-fiction, August 2017