All About Drew & Rachel

Drew

I was born and raised in the suburbs of St. Paul, Minnesota.  I now live in the city of St. Paul.  In-between has been an adventure.

One major passion of mine is learning about the wider world.  When combined with a strong work ethic instilled by my parents, it led me to self-fund travel experiences as a youth with the Boy Scouts to scuba dive in Florida, with my church to canoe and camp in northern Minnesota, and with my school to practice Spanish in Costa Rica.  At the time I didn’t know where God would guide me, but travel was just the beginning.

In college I explored some of my ancestral roots by spending a semester studying in Scotland.  I trained to be a social studies teacher and learned that I could do my student-teaching semester overseas.  I chose that option and ended up being placed at an international school in Hong Kong, China.

Living abroad was life-changing for me.  I loved being able to live in a culture, not just travel through it.  I also met Rachel while living and teaching overseas.  I was also able to worship beside a diversity of Christians in each place I lived or visited.  I ended up returning to Hong Kong to teach full-time for four years and then moved to Monterrey, Mexico for four more years.

When Rachel and I married we wanted to be closer to our families so we settled in St. Paul.  While our professional lives as teachers continued in Minnesota, married life and then parenthood were major changes.  Being married to Rachel has been wonderful and a stretching experience as I grow into a shared life with her.  With the birth of Bram we have shifted into the role of parenting which has been incredibly rewarding overall.

When Bram was one and a half we decided that I would become a stay-at-home dad.  I still am using my social studies teaching skills to help students with online tutoring, but the focus of my day is family.  I enjoy cooking and baking with Bram, playing inside and outside, and exploring our community.  It has been fun and rewarding to help him grow and mature.

In addition to enjoying cooking and baking, I like outdoor activities like camping, hiking, biking, playing ultimate frisbee, and tending to a vegetable garden.  Indoors I like to read, play board games, and follow Minnesota-based college and professional sports teams.

Rachel

I was born and raised on a farm in rural Iowa.  The values and love that I had from my family, friends, and entire community have really shaped who I’ve become today.  I thrived in a small school.  I was quite shy while I was growing up, but because you can be involved in almost any activity you want in a small high school, I was.  I took dance lessons from when I was three years old until I was 17, and acted in plays and musicals in high school.  Those two things helped me to grow in my confidence.  

I loved school growing up and that has continued throughout my life as I still love to learn and help others.  That pretty much sums up who I am to the core.  This desire to help others I think may also stem from growing up in a small town, where families still have to rely on each other and help one another when disaster strikes or someone needs extra help.  I became a teacher because I love to learn and I love to see the lightbulb come on in kids’ eyes.  I also really enjoy being around kids and hearing all the creative, interesting and sometimes hilarious things they come up with.  To some extent, I’m a kid at heart, and so one of my favorite things about being a parent is getting to do all the fun things that kids get to do - go to the Children’s Museum, to the zoo, eat macaroni and cheese.  

One of my favorite ways to learn is by traveling.  In college and right after college, I was able to travel to Australia, West Africa, Singapore, and finally I lived in Mexico for a few years.  I’m so grateful for those experiences where I was able to meet so many people who are different from me and learn how other people view the world.  Traveling has been one of the things that has truly changed my life and given me a whole different perspective after living in small town Iowa for most of my life.  Meeting and interacting with people who are different from us is such a powerful experience.  Drew and I have been involved with a program here in Minnesota called the St. Paul Intercultural Institute, where we help find host families for Japanese college students.  This has been one way that we’ve been able to continue our passion to learn from and interact with other cultures since we’ve settled back in the United States.  

Becoming a mother has been the best and most transformative thing that has ever happened to me.  As mentioned previously, I just love doing fun kid things and experiencing them for the first time again through Bram’s eyes.  I love when Bram tells me that he loves me and gives me a giant hug.  I love seeing how he grows and changes over the years.  Honestly, I even love learning more about parenting.  I’ve read a number of books over the past few years and have joined multiple discussion groups to talk about parenting because I’ve found that it helps me to be a better parent when I can learn with and from others.