As intertwined as my story is with the story of Love Walks, I’m choosing to separate the two here in order to allow you to understand how God shaped me, preparing me to lead Love Walks. My hope is for you to begin to understand the momentum behind God’s movement in my life and the happenings that have brought me to this place of leading an organization.

It’s worth noting that I didn’t grow up as a Christian. Sure we celebrated Christmas, and I loved an Easter basket as much as the next guy (especially the jelly bellies!). But these holidays held little significance outside of the gifts that they then represented. It wasn’t until I was a Sophomore in high school that I began to understand what it meant to be in relationship with God. It was at that time that he began drawing me toward him. And though I would follow, I didn’t do so without hesitation. In fact, I distinctly remember telling God, “I’ll do this Christian thing, but I don’t want to be one of those crazy people traveling to the middle of nowhere, in some distant country to talk about you.” If you know a bit of my story since then you’ll no doubt catch the humor in the plan God had waiting.

Looking back there was always a component of my future that I was sure about, and that was that I would be an entrepreneur. I had no doubt about it, I was going to make a lot of money, and then when the time was right I would use that money to help people. And though God would shape me more and more throughout my time in high school this continued to be my trajectory and plan for years to come. I would work as a supervisor at an electronic store throughout high school, the youngest supervisor in the region and frequently recognized for strong performance. This experience only gave me more confidence in my ability to succeed in business. In the upcoming years I would finish my associate’s degree in business management and go on to work as a licensed financial adviser for a major bank while also going to school full time. It was all part of what I thought was my own plan. A foolish boy I was…

“To man belong the plans of the heart, but from the LORD comes the reply of the tongue.” -Proverbs 16:1

Around this time God began placing a burden upon my heart. I had continued to study scripture, to pursue the heart behind this God of the Bible. In doing so I began to understand the tangible connection between faith in Him and our response to loving those around us. So what does a young entrepreneurial type do with a burden like this?

Start something.

That’s what I did, I started the organization Love God Love People, we know it now as Love Walks.

By 2007 God had spent the last three years taking me through a season of what I would only later recognize as intense shaping and preparation. Just as described in the book of 1 Peter, I was being refined for God’s purpose on my life. The organization I had started had been doing monthly trips to Mexico for about seven months and I was about to step out of my comfort zone for the first time leaving all that I knew behind and traveling to Kenya for a two week missions trip. My time was primarily spent in Kibiera, at the time the largest slum in Africa. It was home to 1.5 million people in three square miles. Roughly 2/3 were infected with HIV/AIDS and almost three out of every four men you passed on the street would be unemployed. Sewage flowed freely through ditches along the walking paths which would navigate through the mud and stick structures lifting up the thin tin roofs placed upon them like a face-down open book upon a table. I returned from this experience exposed to a new depth of both sin and grace.

The week following the trip I would quit my job at the bank. Not knowing what was next and having the very foundations of what I thought I was created to do in traction, I felt as though I was helpless, caught helplessly in the strong current of the river which was God’s will for my life. That was in fact the case. God was leading me towards a whirlwind of opportunities that I hadn’t anticipated would lie just around the bend.

I would soon find myself finishing my degree in a program at ASU’s downtown campus that I didn’t even know existed: Nonprofit Leadership and Management. It was the perfect fit for God’s newly revealed plan for my life. I completed my degree, walking across the stage to accept my diploma with the golden Magna Cum Lada cords draped around my neck, a NextGen Leader Scholarship fresh on my mind, and an internship with Food for the Hungry just months away.

At this point you may be waiting for me to get to the point, or, you may begin to see what I did. That all of this is the point. In each one of these moments God was preparing me, equipping me to do his will.

My internship followed suit. God opened an opportunity for me to work with some amazing directors within the globe wide organization Food for the Hungry. I spent two months working with an incredibly talented team here in Phoenix which was leading the charge in Phoenix against underage sex trafficking, this effort was based around a documentary produced by a good friend of mine entitled “Branded”. Not only was I learning about the intricacies of a nonprofit each day, but God was planting seed for what this would mean in my own efforts to lead. Soon after my time working with the Branded team I found myself in Rwanda for two months working on shaping a 15 year development project in a community that was rural fact most young infants that saw me either ran towards me delighted with the novelty of a long haired, pale American; or (more often) clung to their mothers leg with tears running down their cheeks and screams of fear piercing through the air. I would use a restroom that was no more glamourous than a hole in the ground, and would visit the Rwandan hospital/clinic more than once. The point? It was stretching and an experience that I believe few are privileged to have at this stage of life. In my time there I would work closely with the national staff as well as the ex-patriot staff. I would also be strongly influenced and challenged by the Country Director whom I had the privilege of staying with. It is a project that I could spend more time than I have here talking about. My time there was a blessing by God, nothing I earned or of my own doing.

So, for those of you still with me, you may still be asking how some, or maybe any of this is relevant to the role I play in Love Walks. For me this story, my story, reminds me of the consistency of God molding those he chooses to follow Him by taking them through times of trial, times of refining, and generally speaking- times in the desert. For me that has been very tangible. Though not covered in this article I have spent my fair share of time with physical trials, I’ve had my fair share of failures, and I have each time found myself stronger and more prepared to follow God through those experiences. It has been a process of God preparing me to do and be who He has always designed me to be.

Through all of this I am leaning humility, faith and boldness. It is in all of this that God has tied together my own journey and the journey of Love Walks. He has placed upon my heart a call forward, a call to lead a young adult generation past the temporary nature of supporting social justice causes through feeble forms of marketing, and onward towards a higher call of recognizing and responding to His gospel. A director of a local nonprofit whom I feel blessed to call a friend built much of his organization mission on one question- “What if.” I ask that same question. What if 18-25 year olds in Phoenix, one at a time, would pursue Christ with everything they had. What if Loving God and Loving People wasn’t part of our story, but the basis of all of our story! This is my burden. It is my call to pursue that in my own life and to lead others toward the same- becoming lifelong Lovers of God and People. It is the call on all of our lives, it is up to us to respond, and to walk towards that call!