Who am I?
I am just a guy, but I have an extraordinary wife who has made my home a place where I want to be because she is there. I have three grown children (and a fourth who married into the family) whose stories are all unusual and captivating, and maybe someday I will be ready to tell them in print.
I grew up in the home of a father who brought home fascinating people from all over the world. And I had a mother who cheerfully fed them and seemed to find humor in everything–a contagious virus I wish I could spread more thoroughly.
My brother, sister and I grew up in four environments:
- With 14,000-foot mountains, singing rivers, golden aspen groves, and pine forests in our Colorado back yard. Now those things are 45 minutes away instead of 15. Traffic is heavier.
- In a station wagon that took us all over the country. When we were adults Dad asked, “Did it bother you that every trip we took was so that I could speak at some conference?” Our answer: “Was it? We got to see America. Getting to hear your stories was the ice cream on the apple pie.”
- In an international family. Dad taught at a grad school where people came from all over the world to learn how to deliver the good news all over the world. And we got to swap stories with all these people.
- In a spiritual community. I didn’t have to endure much religion because our weekly fellowship was with people who had contagious joy in our Creator and Savior. I expect to see them all again.
At a young age I encountered the Savior and discovered that He accepted me. It has been grace to be in his company ever since.
I got a liberal arts education at a college in Minnesota where I majored in extra-curriculars and roomed with (1) an artist who could have made it as a stand-up comic, (2) a math-wiz who painted entire scenes on our apartment walls and had walked away from a scholarship at MIT because it was boring, and (3) an Ethiopian whom even other Ethiopians said was “not so much cross-cultural as just unusual.” My kind of people.
I had jobs as a painter, a writer, a teacher, an editor, a music director, and a pastor. I have laid concrete, painted three-story buildings, written ESL textbooks, developed computer-based curricula without ever understanding computers, led youth programs for immigrants I didn’t expect to meet, and taught children to sing for professional opera company performances. And I once performed with a 5-member mouth band on National Public Radio. (But who hasn’t?)
I got an MDiv degree at Denver Seminary and “served” (or was tolerated by) churches in Minneapolis, Denver, Sacramento, Sioux Falls, and Northern Colorado. I now spend days, evenings and many weekends with undergrad, grad and post-grad scholars from East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Latin America. Most of them are educators or musicians. Most of them want friends and a little help with English. Some of them want to explore the Bible. And some of them stay in touch via internet after they have moved on.
–David Shelley
NocoInternational
Coming soonish.
ISI
Check back later.