Christmas Letter

Sometimes you go through periods of life when you get the feeling that you are about to walk on the moon. When the transitions come fast, the learning curve is steep, and you become more and more convinced that only His faithful hands and His strength are going to get you there. You don’t know exactly what the next step will bring, or how strong gravity will hit you, but your heart flutters with incredible excitement at the possibilities of shedding the familiarity of the known. Every end brings a new beginning. This year has put me in the classroom of trusting God, one step at a time.

It started with the simple act of moving my tassel from one side of my mortarboard to the other. In that moment, my years of formal education came to a close and adulthood was given free reign of my responsibilities and actions. I honestly couldn’t have imagined a better college experience than the one I was given through my four years at George Fox. The relationships that were built, the experiences breathed, and the knowledge gained have changed my life forever. I have been stretched in my perspective, talent, and faith, and the expansion has brought beauty in ways unimaginable. One of these ways has been a girl named Mandee (smile). We met on a work week to Malibu, a YoungLife camp in the Canadian gulf islands, spring break of my junior year, and I have been overwhelmed by the way God has written our story together over the past year and a half. Her incredible heart for people, sense of adventure, love of laughter, humility in faith, and her insuppressible joy have captured my heart and I absolutely cannot wait to see how God directs our steps in the months to come.

After graduating, I had the opportunity to travel to South Africa as a student leader through May Serve, a program at George Fox that sends a serve team to different parts of the world every year during the month of May (my sophomore year I went to Brazil through the same program). Being both a leader and a student found its balance in the gift of being able to mentor many of the guys on the trip as we were stretched by the challenges and struggles around us as we served. I felt overwhelmed by how, in the sifting that happens on a missions trip, God would show another way to glorify Him as my weaknesses were washed out. I was challenged every day by the perspectives that my teammates brought to our nightly debriefings and reminded of how the workings of the kingdom of God are realized through the facets of community.

Coming back from South Africa I began the job search, and both my network and craigslist.org became my best friends. As I sent out résumés and dressed up for interviews, God continued to close doors and has led me to start my own freelance design business. It has been both an exciting and challenging endeavor, but one in which God has continued to encourage and affirm. I continue to hunt for full time positions, but have learned to be content and surrendered in the waiting. And as I look to the next year, I can't help but smile with excitement. God is good and I am in His hands. I hope you are doing so good and that you see His fingerprints all over your life. Merry Christmas.