What did you do while living in Korea?

R: I went to the second half of eighth grade and then all of high school there. So pretty much if you just imagine Dead Poet’s Society but with all black hair, then that would be my life.

How did you become a Christian?

In Korea in 1995, I had a very cool teacher friend  who unexpectedly died and left behind a one-year old kid and husband. I was beside myself and freaked out. She was a Christian, and all of her friends who came to her memorial service had great hope. They were not despairing like I was despairing. So I asked ‘How? I’m lost, I’m dying, you’ve got to explain to me how you could have this hope.’ Over about a month or so, some of her friends came to me and explained that God died in her place and that she knew that. God became a man who died in her place so that she was not going to be swallowed up by death because He had died for her, and that I could have that same confidence. So I said, sign me up. That was the start.

What is your favorite Disney movie?

I really related to Inside Out. I have a poster right beside me every day. It’s about a little girl who has to move and how incredibly difficult that is for her to say that this same thing is both good and bad. I didn’t learn that lesson until I was 35 years old.

How did you meet your wife?

In college, she came downstairs to tell me to turn my metal music down, and then I invited her to go watch My Fair Lady. We found out that we both went to the same very large Christian group on campus, so I worked up the courage to ask her out to Olive Garden.

What do you enjoy most about Anime Club?

I think it is remarkable that a bunch of middle and upper school kids want to watch movies with subtitles and discuss them in such a mature fashion. It is an incredible subculture of people who feel like they are in a foreign culture when they are at home, which is something I very much relate to.

As a child, what did you think you were going to be when you grew up?

When I graduated high school, I wanted to be a poet or Steve Jobs. Neither one worked out! I think the hardest job I’ve ever had was being a firefighter. Than only lasted about 6 months before I was utterly exhausted, and I transferred full-time to the emergency room. The ER was less work and chaos, comparatively.

If there is one lesson you would like to share from all your experiences, what would it be?

I wish I could tell all your readers that they are loved more by God than they can imagine. The lesson is, you don’t have to work or prove yourself to make it: you’re already “in”.  Other than that, I would say, make flashcards and hit them every spare second you have. They make school so much easier.

# Countries Lived in: 7 (Germany, Japan, Korea, England, China, Belgium, America)

# Countries Visited: close to 30

Languages Created:

1000 BC Hebrew + Tagalog (If Hebrews had been carried off into slavery in the Philippines)

Lakota or Navajo + Yiddish (If Jews of Europe ran away to North America)

Bantu Polynesian (If there was an African language in Polynesia)

Languages Learned:

Parseltongue (Harry Potter)

Na’vi (Avatar) – also translated majority of the Bible into Na’vi