Born in Yakima, Washington in 1995, I was raised agnostically and didn't know God or His Son. At 18 I joined the Army as a Nodal Systems Operator & Maintainer (IT Network Admin). I was trained in Georgia and stationed in Japan, Texas, and North Carolina. When I arrived in NC in 2019, I was sent to Europe for a training exercise where I was attached to someone who was an avid believer. On our first Sunday in Germany, he asked me if I would go to church with him. I had nothing else going on, so I agreed. Nicolle and I had been married since 2016, and that first sermon — on 1 Corinthians 7:4 — convicted me on how selfish I had been in our marriage. It brought up a lot of questions, and God showed His grace by putting someone like Steven in my life to encourage me to seek Him for the answers. Steven and I made a deal that when we got back to NC, if he picked me up every Sunday, I would go. Steven, being a faithful man, was there every Sunday.

I deployed later that year, where I got to advance my career, but more importantly, Steven continued to disciple me as best he could remotely. He and some other believers pushed me to attend a local Bible study, because we were so far out in the boonies we didn't have a chaplain. There we went through the book of John, and through the devout men in that group, I started to truly understand the Good News of Jesus Christ. When I returned, I started attending a Navigator's Bible Study, which started my journey into discipleship ministry. In 2021, I was planning on leaving active duty but was struggling with what direction to move. I started pursuing a contractor position in DC, thinking it would be the best way to support my family and career. After some much-needed spiritual counsel from Matthew, a Senior Navigator Staff Member, Nicolle and I committed to prayerfully considering the choices we were making. Matthew 6:33 kept coming up in that process — seek His Kingdom first, and everything else will follow. We decided to turn down the job and walk away from the new home we were building so we could continue to focus on Gospel outreach and disciple-making. It was at that point that I realized I had finally dedicated my life to Christ — when I put His needs above my own.

After a couple of years of growing in discipleship ministry, God put it on my heart to take the tech skills I had pretty much been idolizing and put them into ministry. Jeremiah 10:14-16 hit me hard during that time — the idea that anything we make with our own hands and covet for ourselves will never last. My work as an IT engineer for the DoD taught me that there are a lot of techniques ministries could use to do the same thing I had been training to do my whole adult life: connect people around the world with little visibility and few resources. That idea inspired me to create MicroBible Portals (MBP). Matthew — the same friend who had intervened in my life and encouraged me to stop and pray about going to DC — became a pilot for JAARS and told me there was a position open for Director of IT. God opened a door for me to not just bring my idea, but my entire life's work, and dedicate it to Him the way it should have been from the start. In January of 2025, I started full time as Director of IT at JAARS and finished my onboarding with New Horizons Foundation to begin the MBP project.