Be Where Your Feet Are

At this stage in my life, I find myself living in and out of one specific phrase that is
pivotal to my mindset when entering into any endeavor that I might find myself in. This ideology
has been shaped by many of my friends, my family, authors of books, and mentors that have
poured into my heart and have molded me into the man that I am today. However, my camp
director coined the phrase that I have dedicated my life to. Words are very powerful to me. They
resonate very strongly with me so I enjoy writing and journaling and find a lot of peace in
articulating the thoughts that are in my mind. With no further ado, my life motto at this chapter
in my life is, be where your feet are.
Be where your feet are. How profound is that? Its so simple, yet so incredibly deep and
moving. This is the way I strive to live in all that I do. Whether I am blessing the 30th customer
in line at my workplace, learning from a professor with greater wisdom than myself in class,
catching up with an old friend over a cup of pour over coffee, running errands, sending emails
and being productive, or hiking to the summit of my favorite mountain and looking out over the
valley below in wonder and awe. I chose to believe that the greatest adventure in life is not the
road trip out west that I long to embark on, not in the incredible summer that I spent in New
York City working for Gods Kingdom, not traveling to Costa Rica and interacting with the
farmers that grow the coffee that I so love and adore to work with here in America, and not the
summers spent at camp where I am living solely for others and seeking their needs before my
own. I believe that the greatest adventure that I can find joy in is the small interactions that I
have with my brothers and sisters each and every day, the ritual of making a great cup of joe
every morning, writing a letter to a dear friend and sending it in the mail, buying a gift as a

surprise for someone that I look up to, and reading books each day to expand my mind and gain
new perspectives. The fullness of life is in the small moments that happen each day.
We often times miss the whimsy and joy that life can bring us when we are not focusing
our attention on the present moment. When we live fully engaged in our current surroundings,
our eyes are opened to the beauty of this journey that we are all navigating. This way of living,
this focus on the current is not an easy dance to learn. It is tough, and I oftentimes scuff my shoes
and find sweat on my brow from this full and rich lifestyle. The steps of this dance our foreign to
me because they are not created by me, but by my Father in Heaven. For so long, I would walk
this path less traveled fixing my eyes solely on Jesus, hoping, longing, and waiting for the day
that I would be in His presence. While this is an amazing way to live life and essential to the
Christian walk, I was missing the splendor around me. I learned that its not always exclusively
about the destination, but the journey. God wanted me to bring His Kingdom come, and His will
be done, on earth as it is in heaven. He began to show me through His word, through prayer and
meditation, through my mentors, and through my favorite authors that God wanted me to think
of others before myself and to live fully present in each moment.
I wanted to write a better story. I wanted to be able to look back on the chapters of my
life with pride and joy that I was working for the betterment of human nature by simply being
where my feet are and impacting the lives around me through simple gestures. Living a life for
others meant engaging the man next to me on the bus, sitting with the stranger who looks lonely
in the coffee shop, pouring my heart and soul out into my close friends and affirming them with
love and compliments and pointing them back to Jesus. While I grew up in a Christian home,
was homeschooled, and was taught the bible from a very early age, I never fully understood how
freeing and liberating this way of living was; this finding joy in all things. This ideology was

mainly shaped by some of my favorite authors Bob Goff, Donald Miller, Shauna Niequist, John
Eldredge, and Dale Carnegie. When I moved to Boone, I began attending a campus ministry
called RUF and was mentored by my minister Matt Howell. A couple, Connie and Marty Root,
from my church theHeart began imparting a lot of wisdom to me as well. The leader, Jonathan
Walton, of a missions organization named New York City Urban Project, also taught me a lot of
what I have learned. However, most of this ideology was shared with me by my camp director
Dan Davis at Camp Rockmont for Boys in Black Mountain, NC. Dan is one of the most
intentional and influential men I have ever met and I strive to live the way that he does. Where
God is first, people are second, and he is third. The be where your feet are mentality is only
fully executed when we fully believe that Jesus has already won the battle. He was conquered sin
and death and there should be no worry and strife anymore. He was won and so we may live this
life with joy and happiness and focus on the present and those conversations of meaning that can
be had each and every day.
This ideology has absolutely altered the career path that I desire to embark on. I am very
passionate about youth development and long for adolescents to grow up learning these very
same ideas that I am writing about. I wish to live my life for others in a very intentional and
structured way and a career with this same mission is a good place to start. I am interning this
semester at Western Youth Network here in Boone, NC. This is a local non-profit that mentors
at-risk youth in the High Country and provides afterschool programs and tutoring in efforts to
inspire them to reach their full potential. I want to work at Crossnore School in the spring after I
graduate. This is a Christian boarding school in Crossnore, NC that caters to youth from rough
family backgrounds. From there, I will head back to Camp Rockmont as a Tribal director for the
summer. I will then move to Nicaragua where I will work on a coffee farm that helps funds

Young Life in this country. I will return to camp as a Tribal Director again with the hopes that I
secure a full-time job as a camp director at this Christian summer camp. I hope to live and work
at this camp for years to come until I retire from youth development and open a coffee shop
where I seek to create direct connections with the coffee farmers that grow the beans I roast and
to make a difference in the lives of all of my customers. I hope to be where my feet are in all of
these endeavors, to find joy in the task at hand, and to seek others before myself in all that I do.