I didn’t grow up dreaming of visiting every country in the world or building a company around global exploration. But I did grow up with frequent movement, at least from the age of 11 onward.

Born in Texas, I’d lived in Michigan and Indiana by my teenage years, living in close to 10 different homes along the way. My family would make several annual road trips back to south Texas to visit relatives. I didn’t realize it then, but those early moves shaped me: they made change and travel feel normal. Looking back, I think they wired me for adventure long before I ever boarded a plane. 

I was always somewhat amazed (and slightly envious) when I met people who still lived in their childhood home and had access to a permanence I only got glimpses of.

By March of the following year, I stepped away from college. There was an internal and spiritual shift taking place, something deeper I wasn’t fully aware of until later. I didn’t feel I was going anywhere with my studies. College was more about the social aspect, friends, and “this is what you are supposed to do.” I didn’t have career aspirations of working in some specific field.

But I did have ideas. Notions of things that sounded fun. I thought

about being a travel agent. I even had, and still have, the same picture in my head of being a tour guide on a bus in some random country. I thought about doing something outdoors. Someone showed me a NOLS (National Outdoor Leadership School) catalog, and I thumbed through pages of trips to New Zealand, Chile, and beyond, dumbfounded that something like this existed.

I never pursued it. But I did quit university.

I moved back home to Indiana. I had enough of wasting my time and money on an education that didn’t have direction. My life would change drastically in this next season. I encountered God in a real way that led me to pursue and enroll in a six-month outdoor wilderness training program in California. It was rugged, stretching, and completely different from anything I’d done before, and exactly what I needed.

After graduating from that program, I applied to a private college in Indiana and got accepted (surprisingly, as my grades from ISU were not the best). This time, I had a renewed hunger for learning. I studied International Studies with Ministry and Business minors. I wanted to learn more about God, cultures, people, and places. I spent the next two and a half years earning my degree and was able to study abroad in Beijing, China. I was also enrolled in Jerusalem University College but sadly, was unable to attend due to conflict in the region that year.

I graduated with my degree in International Studies. After graduation, I moved to California, and the world kept calling.

There were three things I wanted to do. First, I’d always wanted to do an around-the-world trip. When I traveled in Europe, I met people traveling on around-the-world tickets. I didn’t even know these existed, but from that moment, I wanted to travel around-the-world on one of these tickets. Second, I wanted to visit New Zealand, but I didn’t know how I would afford it. Third, I wanted to go to Israel since I never got to in college, and I didn’t feel right doing it on my own nor did I have the finances.

I would consider this a wilderness stage of my life, questioning what was next and where I was going.

Then a mutual friend of my sister’s came to visit. I took her on a hike up in the San Gabriel Mountains outside Los Angeles. I remember the drive home clearly because she told me about a school based out of New Zealand that did global outreaches to help the poor and those in need, using around-the-world tickets, and graduated in Israel!

I could not believe my ears. If this school existed, I would’ve already done it.

To make a long story short: I had college debt. I wasn’t making much money. This was the most expensive school I could’ve chosen. But I felt it was the right thing and had clear direction to do it.  I bought a round trip flight with a flexible return date. I basically went with little to no money or at least no idea how I was going to pay for the school. God was faithful. I received the scripture Joshua 1:8-9, “Be strong and courageous, and I will be with you wherever you go,” and He provided for me in miraculous ways. 

I stayed in New Zealand for 3 months for the first phase of the school and then spent the second 3 month phase traveling with 8 other people through South East Asia for our outreach phase. We started our trip in Bali, Indonesia working at an orphanage for two weeks then moving on to Thailand to help rebuild after a horrible tsunami claimed thousands of lives. We then went to Cambodia, India, and Egypt serving and working with non profits, churches and people committed in the local areas we visited. Finally, our whole school met up again in Jerusalem Israel, where we all shared our stories from around the world and graduated on the Mt of Olives overlooking the old city of Jerusalem. 

That year changed my life.

I joined as a student, then became staff the following year. I went around the world again and staffed the school. This time I was a team leader and took a group to serve on the continent of Africa. There were 9 of us in total and we left New Zealand and stared our outreach in South Africa, then went on to Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Ghana.  We did the same as the year before and met with our school in Jerusalem for our graduation. The next year, I became the school leader and completed another around the world trip leading a group of students to China, Mongolia, Taiwan, and Philippines. I went on the following year to lead the school for the next three years, then stepped into a team leadership role on campus. By 2013 I had completed 10 around the world trips! 

All of these experiences, working with students and youth, volunteering around the world, sleeping on floors in African villages, riding on top of buses in the Himalayas of Nepal, working in orphanages in Indonesia, serving at Mother Teresa’s home for the ‘destitute and the dying’, riding camels at the Pyramids, seeing the Taj Mahal, camping on an unrestored part of the Great Wall of China, running with the bulls in Spain, going on safari, getting malaria (twice), this life, I couldn’t have dreamed of.

A friend of mine who’s a school teacher once told me she used me as a modern day example when teaching about nomad people and tribes. I guess that’s what I’d become, in the best possible way.

It brings me to two scriptures: John 10:10, which says He came that we may have life and have it to the full, and Ephesians 3:20, which says God is able to do immeasurably more than we can ask, think, or imagine. That scripture would lead me to start Immeasurable Journeys almost a decade later.

At the end of 2012, after a challenging season of leadership at the campus and completing a 6 week Leadership school in Spain, I felt to take a sabbatical and step down from my role without knowing if I’d come back or what was next. I just knew I couldn’t stay. I knew I was leaving New Zealand and that I would be back but I didn’t know when. I was disappointed that I may be leaving with out exploring much of the North Island. I spent most of my 8 years in New Zealand on the South Island. 

I’m developing this section of the website to share stories and communicate things that are important to me, to inspire others in their own pursuits. It may not be travel. It may be something totally different. But I hope we move toward what’s inside us, the curiosities that are God-given, and explore all that this life we’ve been blessed to live has to offer.

Hopefully, this is a place of inspiration. Maybe you’ll learn something new from my own experience.

This space is simply a place to share the journey:
The stories behind the miles.