My mom used to say that I was curious even before I was born, kicking around and wanting to be out to explore the world. When others are running away from a situation, experience, or object I often find myself running towards it with what I call my 'dead bird' reaction. When I was around five years old I found a dead bird on the sidewalk by my house. Intrigued, I found a stick and began poking it and examining it, after a few minutes of this I casually threw up beside it and then returned to the bird to continue my thorough examination. I have retained this curiosity through the years, albeit, I haven't vomited from something other than being sick since then. My curiosity has overcome any feelings of things being weird, interesting, and gross and provided me with experiences that taught me much and prepared me to do even 'weirder' things. I gutted my first deer this year with my dad and grandpa, the deer having been acquired via a teenager car crash, (all is well that ends well?) and even though I was a little nauseated, having my veterinarian grandpa point out to me all the different muscles, bones, and organs, proved immensely useful when I took my first anatomy class, and subsequent cadaver lab. (Who knew we were so similar to deer on the inside!) Throughout my growing up my mom was constantly and consistently introducing us to new and ethnic foods, which has cultivated a curiosity of taste buds that is undaunted by odd-looking food, or more accurately, excited by odd-looking food. I still can't understand why my siblings won't eat food if it's dyed a 'weird' color, because hey, purple mac and cheese still tastes like mac and cheese. And although I have to admit that I did not try to figure out what type of meat they were chopping into the posole in the slums of Mexico, I did eat several bowls of it. Besides making me open to new or strange ideas, foods, and experiences, my curiosity is currently giving me a wealth of conversation starters and continuers and provided me with many enlightening conversations in areas most people wouldn't stay in. An hour-long conversation about greywater systems after a toilet explosion with my dad has given me several ideas of how to save money if Michigan ever makes the systems legal, and a similar length listening session as my friend's dad talked about crypto gave me way more information than trying to sift through Wikipedia pages for real information, and several good warnings and tips about investing. And if anyone is stalking my search history they will find that in the past week I have researched hymns, sweat glands, POTS and its connection to headaches, climate change, chicken cheesecake (yes it's a thing), unusual eye colors, how to make beards grow longer and who the oldest person alive is.

I had just moved into my nearly all African-American neighborhood and was taking a twenty-minute break from helping my family renovate the crack-house we had bought. The park was just five houses down and I was excited to go play, I was a spunky kid and often tried to get everyone on the playground to join in a game of something or another that I may or may not have made up on the spot. I saw a girl and her grandma sitting at the picnic tables and headed in their direction, I heard the grandma urge her granddaughter to go and play with me, I didn't exactly expect the response I got, as she loudly responded: "I don' wanna play with no white girl." I took that as a challenge. Five years later when we moved out to Michigan the same girl came up to me and my sister, close to tears, hugging us and saying she was going to miss us and we had to come back and visit. What was in between was a mixture of persistent invitations, food, Jesus, weird conversations, smiles, more Jesus, prayer, and a lot of patience. I usually don't have a lot of patience unless I'm in a competition, so I took her coldness as a challenge and came out victorious. She still wasn't the nicest girl on the block when we left, but she definitely wasn't the same girl I met as the only 10-year-old white girl on the playground in 2015

I didn't know youth could make a difference until I was twelve years old. Then, through a series of rather unusual events, we found a group that was heavily involved in anti-abortion ministry. My first day in pro-life ministry involved me becoming increasingly convicted as I witnessed young people, full of fire and conviction, preaching and sidewalk counseling in front of an abortion clinic in Chicago. Here is an excerpt from what I wrote later that week about the event, "That day we stood for over four hours, but if one life was saved, it was all worth it. If one innocent baby was not murdered, it was worth it. It may seem like what we were doing could never make a change and wouldn’t work but here is a small story from that day..." I went on to tell a story of a man who verbally harassed me and my other young friends because of the pro-life literature we were passing out. This same man returned sometime later, having read our pamphlet and realized he was for us, and asked for a pamphlet to give to his then-pregnant wife. This was the beginning of a conviction that continues to burn in me today. After the conference, we struggled to continue in the ministry, there were very few people in Chicago who would stand outside of abortion clinics with us, and I was only thirteen at the time, on top of this, I was just barely becoming brave enough to ask for ketchup at Mcdonalds. I learned more about the arguments for and against abortion, and as a family, we attended more conferences and connected with people we could minister with. But it continued to be difficult to minister in Chicago, simply for a lack of people. When we moved to Michigan, this changed. I realized I was in a community that would willingly join me at the abortion clinic, and by this point, knew I was well versed in all the arguments I would encounter, and how to confront or comfort the moms going in. So I set a date, called all my friends, made a few signs for the quiet ones to hold, and showed up at the abortion clinic. As I continued to gather a group and go out on Saturday mornings, I found myself increasingly comfortable sidewalk counseling, passing out pamphlets, and simply talking with people about abortion. Out in front of the Abortion Clinics, saw the good, the bad, and the ugly. To be honest, there was a lot of the bad and the ugly, but we showed up because God said life is sacred, because God gave us voices, and because children are dying. And miracles happened. We watched women go from hard to soft, from swearing to crying, and from intent to not so intent. But the most beautiful thing of all, we saw babies saved.