How I got here...

Hey there! Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, I know life is busy for all of us so it means a lot that you would take some time out to read about my journey through life. 

Here it goes. So the reason why I wanted to write this blog is to share about my journey, how I got to where I am, where I am going, and all the fun details in between. If I haven't talked to you recently, there's surely some details that have changed, but I guess that's why you're reading this, huh? I can be a pretty private person, I like to think of it as cool and mysterious, but that's just because I hear girls like mysterious guys. I can now confirm that either A) I am not cool and mysterious, or B) girls don't actually like cool and mysterious guys. Your pick. I am leaning towards option A. Back to my point, I want to try to share more with people because sharing is caring. 

At this point in time (January 19th, 2013) I am preparing to move to Gulu, Uganda to teach at a school, help expand the school's infrastructure, and be a part of all of the other things God is doing over there. Now, maybe I'm wrong, but knowing my own track record, it doesn't exactly seem like something I would be doing. It sounds like my brother Brett, which is really why I am going because I need to one-up him and go two continents away rather than one. OK, hopefully you knew that was a joke. So let me start from the beginning and attempt to reconstruct the timeline of how I got to where I am at. 

I've been pretty consistent and boring throughout my life. I think my Mom would love it if I got in trouble for doing something stupid like streaking. I knew I wanted to go into Chemical Engineering since my sophomore year of high school and didn't stray from that. I only applied to Oregon State because that's where I knew I wanted to go. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but I didn't really have this desire to go anywhere else or study anything else. Seven years after deciding what I wanted to do with the rest of the life I was blessed to have a job doing just that. But let's rewind, a lot has happened in between those two points in life. I'm cruising through my freshman year, doing the whole chemical engineering thing, but on the other hand I have always really enjoyed teaching, tutoring and that sort of stuff, which is why I think I always had that in the back of my mind. The way I saw it is that God had given me that desire for a reason, so I thought it would be simple. Switch my major to Education and become a teacher. Easy enough, black and white, just how I like things. 

"Not so fast" says God. Not audibly, but it was very apparent he had other plans. So what happened is that I planned out my college career perfectly so that I could graduate in 5 years with both an engineering degree and education. This seemed like the safe option, then I could have a chemical engineering degree to fall back on while being a teacher. Cool, slight readjustment to my life, but I feel good about it and I figured that God did too because I could fit it into my college schedule. Sounds dumb saying it like that, but really, it worked out perfectly, so it had to be God's will. As I'm working out my future and talking to my roommates about it and stuff, for some reason I had the word Africa in the back of my mind. But let's be honest, everyone talks about Africa and that we need to be helping out and such, so it was a pretty easy thought to brush off whenever it came to mind. 

About a year goes by, still on the same path, but at this point in time I have lost a lot of my desire to teach and was pretty stoked about engineering (I know, I'm a nerd and I accept it), but this was really confusing to me because I was certain that I was in "God's Will" and that he wanted me to be a teacher. I struggled with this for a while, because it seemed like I had made up my mind to follow God's calling in life but he was the one who couldn't make up his mind of what he wanted me to do. Oh Beau, so naive. But hey, eyesight is 20/20 from the future.. or whatever that saying is. So I ended up parting ways with the education double-degree and going back to Chemical Engineering. It's now Junior year and I am on Student Staff with Young Life, and in this program we read a few books throughout the year. Because we're all poor, we love free stuff. So we ended up getting this book for free through a conference we went to, so it then became our book to read for the Fall of 2010. I procrastinated reading the book because I had a lot of schoolwork at the time, but the night before we we're supposed to have read half the book, I decided it was a good time crack that guy open.  Yeah, I could have just stayed quiet during our discussion and no one would have known I didn't read it, but I'm a good student so I pulled a late night and early morning and cruised through the book. God always seems to talk to me in the mornings. The book, The Hole in Our Gospel  really hit me hard. In Christian language, we call this convicting. It's a great book and I recommend it to everyone, but to sum it up it talks about how believers are called to be fighting injustice, not in the way superheros fight crime, but just as people who live and love in a radically different way. This quote resonated with me from the book and really struck a chord when I first read it: “Sometimes I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, famine and injustice in the world when he could do something about it… but I’m afraid He might ask me the same question.”

I finished the book and it honestly changed my life. I felt directed and purposeful even though I didn't know what that purpose and direction would be, but I felt confidence in it. It was a weird feeling to have, but I think that is what Paul means when he talks about the "peace that surpasses all understanding" in the letter to the Philipians. Maybe I'm taking it out of context, but my friends who are in Bible school will be able to correct me on that one. I started looking into serving as an engineer maybe building wells, or designing them, or somehow using my engineering abilities to serve others. I spent quite a bit of time looking into different organizations, but nothing quite seemed right. When I was looking around, I came across the Peace Corps, which seemed like a really cool organization and I liked a lot of what they did, but they didn't send people out as engineers but mostly dealt with education, community development, disease prevention - all good things, but not engineering. At this point I was still set on serving as an engineer, because that was the part of the engineering-teaching cycle I was on, and sometimes I can be pretty thick-headed, which I'm sure you've gathered by this point in the story. Time goes by and no organization really exactly sticks out to me. There are a lot of awesome organizations out there, so I debated writing a handful down and picking out of the hat. Maybe I wasn't that desperate, but I did spend the better part of my Christmas Break looking into different places... It was after a few weeks of searching that I was talking with a buddy and I mentioned the Peace Corps and how it seemed like a cool organization, but they didn't do engineering stuff, but he casually mentioned that he could see me teaching math or science. I have no idea why I was such a dumdum for those past few weeks, I guess I completely forgot that I had a passion for teaching. 

Long story short, I decided to apply to the Peace Corps. Had an interview, got in. I was stoked, I thought that I had finally pieced together all the different puzzle pieces of my life to figure out what I had been designed for. I'm in the process for a while and then I get my "nomination" for teaching Math in Sub-Saharan Africa leaving June 2013. I was beyond stoked, that is exactly what I wanted to do and where I wanted to do it. I didn't hear much from them after that point, and that was back in June of 2012, so I had a while to wait. I was blessed with the opportunity to go back for some time to work at the engineering firm that I had interned at the year before even though they knew I was planning on leaving in 2013. So while I'm waiting to leave, I decided that I should read books, because there was a long list of books that I "had to read" according to my friends that I had neglected while at school. My brother gave me a book called Love Does, written by this guy who is just crazy in love with Jesus named Bob Goff. He has some phenomenal stories and it is definitely worth a read, even if you don't have a relationship with our Creator. The thing about reading books is that they make you think, and thinking is a dangerous thing because it might actually change things. So I read this book and at the end is a short story of this guy who gives up his life in America and decides that he is going to move to Africa to start this school with Bob. I guess Bob made the publishing company build him this school as a payment for the book, which is just awesome and hilarious. At the end of the book, Bob puts his phone number, his actual number, in there and invites the reader to give him a call if they want to talk. 

My brother Brett and I had a little man-date because he was getting ready to go to Austria to be a ski instructor for the winter, and we were talking about life and such, and we started talking about Love Does. He asked me if I wished that I was doing something like the guy from the story, just packing up and going somewhere to help start a school or something along those lines. And the thought had definitely crossed my mind when I read the story. I was still set on doing the Peace Corps, but it definitely made me think more about my decision and if I had decided the right way to go about serving and using my teaching desires. 

A couple weeks go by, and I have this desire to call Bob, but I don't really have anything planned to say, maybe talk about his work overseas more and stuff, but to be honest I just felt called to give him a ring. Well, like I've said, I'm stubborn so I didn't call him. It just so happened that he came and talked at church in December. After listening to him speak, I was sure that I needed to call and talk to this guy. So then another week goes by and I finally give him a call. We chat for a bit, I tell him about my plans with the Peace Corps and after hearing his heart for this school and these kids, I just sorta blurted out, "So.. Are there any positions open for teaching at the school?" And classic Bob, he responds "Sure! Come on over! Just buy a plane ticket, and if you want to come check it out for a month, you can do that, or if you want to stay for forty years, you could do that too!". I say, "Well do I have to fill out an application or call someone about my plans?" and he sorta laughs and says, "Well, you called me and I approve. And I'm the guy you would talk to to coordinate things, so we're all set!". We chat for a few more minutes and I tell him that I'll call him back. Well about a week later after talking it over with my good friends and praying about it, I email the Peace Corps giving them my email of resignation (they didn't seem too broken up about it) and then I give Bob a call back. "Alright Bob, I'm in!" and we talk about some more details, but not too many more. For the amount of planning I normally do, and how set I like to have my future, I should be stressing out a lot more about not knowing all the details, but I'm not worried in the least right now. I truly feel that this is where God wants me, and even though I don't know all the details (or even half of them), I am content in following my Father wherever he's leading me, which right now appears to be a foreign country doing some stuff I'm not qualified for, for a group of people I don't know yet. I'm crazy stoked about it all. 

I think about all the places I've been in life, my personality, my interests, my giftings, passions and desires and it just makes sense. This is something I was made for and have been molded to fit this role, and while I know it won't be easy at all and that I'm going to stick out like a skyscraper in Corvallis, I am confident that God is going to teach me so much more than I can imagine in this time and whether this is something I do for two years or two decades, I just want to make myself available to where He wants me in life. 

So here I am, leaving my friends and family, my awesome job, career and personal opportunities, and the state I've called home for half my life, and just trying to let my Lord lead me wherever He may lead me.