I was born on April 27, 1991. I am 18 years old, 6'7" tall, and Dutch. I love sports, friends, and video games. I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan and moved here along with my three sisters and my parents when I was 7 years old. I now live in Indian Hills in Gallup. When I'm not going to school or playing sports, I enjoy playing video games, listening to music, and playing Ping Pong and Word-Twist.  I grew up in a Christian home with parents who were open about their faith. Faith has been a huge part of my life. Whether its basketball, school, or other out of school activities my faith has helped guide me.  Throughout the past two years I have attempted to keep my relationship with God strong and constant. But I often struggle. The time I feel I struggle the most in my faith is when everything is going right, I seem to forget that God helped me get through the bad times. Mr. Newell's World View and Christian Life class has really helped me to question my faith, in a good way. In my opinion if I cannot defend my faith to people who don't believe then I shouldn't believe it myself. Because of that I feel that I need to have a very open mind to our world but also know my faith frontwards and backwards. Through questions  and discussions in our World View's class I feel that I am better equipped to defend my faith. Below are some journals I wrote about a SAC week trip I took to Zion National Park in early April.

March 28, 2009
    We just got back from our Zion trip for this and the next entry but I am going to try to remember some thoughts I had. On this Saturday we hiked a trail called angels landing and holy freaking cow it was probably where some angels landed just to check the view out. Although I think if God were to send them he would make them do the hike because half of the amazement was in the different views as well as just the sheer amazement of having a 700 foot cliff on one side and a 1000 foot cliff on the other. When we got to the top everyone kinda sat around just looking in awe. This was probably one of the best periods of silence I have ever experienced. Although there was tons of people on the top talking and running around it felt like I was in God’s presence for a brief period. I sat I marveled at how powerful God really is, and also how majestic. Massive mountains and sheer cliffs, but all with beauty I have never seen. I was truly in awe of God’s power.

March 29, 2009
    Today we did nothing all morning until Noell called us over to the camp fire. She told us that for the next 30 minutes we would go off on our own with a bible and just think. I walked down the river and sat for at least 20 minutes just thinking about everything from high school obsessions to the power of God in nature and peoples lives. This was a period of total solitude and silence from interaction with people, I used it to pray and think about my personal journey with God. Although I wasn’t aware of the whole picture of what I was thinking about. Thinking back I realize that my thoughts wondered through my spiritual journey. I was also conscious of previous observation about being single minded in prayer and tried to branch out into a few different areas of concern and praise.