The ability to overcome has been a reoccurring theme throughout my life. I was given the opportunity as a child to skip 1st grade because my comprehension for the subjects were already at a 2nd grade level. This was an amazing privilege, but also presented many challenges growing up. Throughout my lower education years, I was always the smallest and the youngest in my class. This led to challenges fitting in socially. Athletically, the competitors were always bigger and older than me. Nevertheless, with amazing support from my family and best friends, I continued through and became a varsity athlete and outstanding student. Wrestling, track, and karate became healthy challenges for me to push myself physically and mentally. I continued to take higher level courses, finishing my high school education with a 4.42 GPA and ranking in the top 1% of my 1000+ class of 2021.Outside of school, my life was connected with the church. My mom was the children's minister, and my dad was a deacon at our local church. I was involved in kids ministry, worship, set up, and tear down teams at the church since I was at the age where I could help in those areas. This led to incredible community, friends, and it became home. Two years after we had a new pastor at our church, a family member opened up that they were being emotionally abused by the pastor the entire time the pastor had been there. Because of our connections and relations with the church, half of the church congregation left, including our family. For me, this meant home was gone. The friends, mentors, and groups were all gone in an instant. Then I went straight to college, away from my family as well. That whole situation led me to a low moment in college, where everything I worked hard to build my life on came crumbing down. That's where God, the Creator and Savior of the universe, met me and reminded me that He was still there. I realized that my focus and priority were in good things, but not God. From that point I reoriented my life around God. Since then, I have continued to see God move and present many new next steps in front of me to overcome my fears and doubts. From a place where social anxiety took control of my life, I now meet with new people every week, lead a kids and young adult group weekly, perform worship on stage, and share the Gospel with others. Another life changing step has been giving eternal purpose to engineering through serving. My goal and purpose are to minister to the physical needs of people while sharing the Gospel that will fulfill all their spiritual needs.
