The Black Family Love Story

I was born to parents who were not able to care for me, and spent the first four years of my life going from foster home to foster home. By God’s grace an older couple became my foster parents at age four and when I was seven years old, their daughter and son-in-law adopted me, and so that loving couple became grandpa and grandma to me! My new dad was a pastor and my mom was a school teacher. I grew up in the church as well, and eventually ended up attending The Master’s College where I met Jason! He covered most of our story, but my days are pretty much filled with running my online shop and enjoying homeschooling our girls! We are going through a lot right now as a family trying to find God’s direction for us, but He is drawing us closer to each other and to Him through it all.

I grew up in San Diego County, and I still consider myself a southern Californian…exiled in Las Cruces, NM I guess? I grew up with loving parents and one sibling, an older sister. My life pretty much revolved around church and baseball. Ultimately this led me to an opportunity to play baseball at The Master’s College where I met Amber! We met at a mutual friend’s apartment. I wouldn’t say we hit it off right away, but after spending more and more time in a group setting we started getting to know each other. In time we began spending time with just each other and built a friendship that led us to marriage! Once we married we lived in Valencia, CA for a couple of years, and through a series of events, we ended up moving our lives to Las Vegas, NV. After less than a year we were blessed with our oldest daughter, Katey! A little over two years later we had Julia, and about 18 months after that we had our twins, Ashley and Ainsley! Yup, four girls under four years old. About a year after the twins turned one we headed out to Las Cruces, NM where we are now. We did this for a work opportunity and to be closer to my parents who also lived here at the time. Prior to moving out this way my work background was primarily sales and recruiting, but God opened up a door to work with a boutique marketing start-up.  About two years into our time in Las Cruces I had the opportunity to start serving as a part-time interim youth pastor at our church. During this time of ministry and through the adoption process God has worked in both Amber’s heart and in my heart to draw us closer to Him and to give us a desire to serve Him in full-time ministry. In the past couple of months things have changed dramatically at my marketing job and now our goal as a family is now to attend seminary. We’re not sure exactly what God has for us but at the beginning of this year we both, again separately, felt a strong desire to serve Him in a greater way. Potentially in missions, possibly just in the local church. So right now we have a lot of struggle going on as we try to determine what the next step that God has for us. Our town is pretty small, so we are actually looking at relocating to Florida to be closer to family and to increase opportunities. Ideally I will get a job at a church, most likely as a youth pastor. But we would be content with a more typical vocation that would allow me to do seminary at the same time.