We're shaped by many things. People and experiences are definitely at the top of that list, but places also impact us and play a role in the kind of person we become...and for me, the kind of stories that I write.
As I've written about in another blog post "TRAILBOUND", I loved growing up in the piney woods of East Texas and part of my heart has always remained there. In fact, over the years of my life, part of my heart has remained in all of the places I have traveled to, especially in those places where I spent many years.
Although my parents never took our family overseas, we did own the road! We were some road-tripping people! Most of our trips were to Colorado where my evangelist grandfather once traveled (as a newlywed) to preach the gospel to gold miners and helped start the first church in Frisco (he also started his own gold mine on Mount Royal just out of town!) We also traveled by car and bus from Texas to California where my mom was from and where most of her family remained. My parents met at Simpson Bible College in San Francisco (now in Redding, CA). And finally, we spent a lot of vacations in Lincoln, NE - my father's hometown - and where his parents and younger brother remained. My grandfather, father, and uncle were all pastors and radio bible teachers at Back To The Bible Broadcast in Lincoln. I remember a church member in Longview letting my father borrow his Cadillac and going on a weekend road trip with my dad (just my younger sister and me while my older brother and sister stayed behind with mom) for a marathon weekend of recording his "Time Out For Good News" broadcasts in Lincoln.
By the time I was a teenager, although we hadn't gone to many different states, we sure traveled a lot of miles between Texas, Colorado, California, and Nebraska.
My first time leaving the country was a mission trip to Aquas Calientes, Mexico, during high school. My second trip was on a Sports/Soccer mission trip to Venezuela during my second year of college. From then on I never really looked back...
1973 - 1992 Born and raised in Longview, Texas, USA
1989 Mexico, spring break (missions)
1992 Graduated from Longview High School
1994 Venezuela, summer (missions)
1996 Kaohsiung, Taiwan, summer (missions)
1997 Graduated from Dallas Baptist University
1997 Kaohsiung, Taiwan, summer (missions)
1997 - 2001 Taipei, Taiwan (work, missions)
1998 Philippines (travel)
1998 Japan (travel)
1999 South Korea (travel)
2000 Thailand (travel)
2001 Hong Kong (travel)
2001 - 2006 Arlington / Kennedale / Duncanville, Texas, USA, (work)
2003 Dalian, China, summer (missions)
2004 Thessaloniki, Greece, summer (missions)
2005 El Salvador (missions)
2005 Guatemala (missions)
2005 Honduras (missions)
2005 Hong Kong / K****, China, summer (missions)
2005 Oxford, England, summer (study abroad)
2005 Edinburgh, Scotland, summer (study abroad)
2005 Norway (travel)
2006 London, England (travel)
2006 Norway (travel)
2006 K****, China (study abroad, missions)
2007 - 2015 Duncanville, Texas, USA, (work, marriage 2008, family)
2007 K****, China, winter
2008 Hawaii, USA, (honeymoon!)
2009 San Carlos, Mexico (meet the family!)
2012 Bahamas (travel)
2014 Hong Kong / K****, China, summer 2014 (scouting trip with wife)
2015 K****, China (family move, work, missions)
2015-2019 Hong Kong, Sanya, Chengdu, Beijing, China
2017 Thailand (travel)
2019 Malaysia (travel)
2020 - 2023 Duncanville, Texas, USA
2022 - Present, Singapore, Singapore
2022 Indonesia (travel)
2023 Malaysia (travel)
19 countries visited or for a while, called "home". 19 places that have made a mark on my life, and kept a piece of me when I left.
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