My now husband Christian and I started coming to St Thomas' almost a year ago. In many ways, on the surface, we may not be the typical individuals or couple that is often drawn to this parish. Although he will be sharing his own story later this year, I think it is important to provide a few small details about him. Born and raised in Mexico City, Christian journeyed first to New York and later to DC in search of adventure and greater professional opportunities. Although raised culturally Catholic, in many ways he was more comfortable celebrating the beginning of the new week catching up on sleep, at the movies, or experimenting in the kitchen. I on the other hand, am the daughter of an Episcopal minister and a middle school teacher. I grew up in New Jersey and Virginia, attended Episcopal church camp for ten years and was active in the Episcopal Youth Community through the beginning of college. I joined the Peace Corps and also came to DC in search of adventure and greater professional opportunities.

If I was to point to the two key experiences that have most changed, shaped, and altered the course of the path of my life, I would have to say that these would be my time at church camp and my semester abroad in Quito Ecuador.

Eagle's Nest was the church camp I attended for five years in Northern New Jersey before my family moved to Virginia when I was in middle school. Eagle's Nest was quite simply, a place of magic. It was a place where little white kids from the suburbs became best friends with little black kids from the inner city. It where we taught each other different games, songs, and new moves before the weekly dance. It was a place that was so beautiful, so inviting, and so open, it had the power to open doors, tear down walls, and bring hearts together if only for a few short months over the summer. Chanco, in rural southern Virginia, was equally inviting in its own way. This camp, and later Diocesan-wide youth events, drew kids who in many ways may have been more like me, yet provided me the opportunity to make friends and strengthen relationships that I still consider invaluable today. You might be surprised that I don't mention at all the Christian education aspect of attending a church camp... well, to me, this is not weird at all. We were drawn there and to each other by a sense of community, shared values, and the desire to learn and grow from each other's individual and collective experiences. Yes, in many ways, all I ever needed to learn about life I learned within the nurturing environment of these two camps...

... until I got off the plane in Quito Ecuador. These five months more than ten years ago both complemented the life lessons from my years at camp and youth group and irreversibly altered my world view. The door that was cracked opened by Eagle's Nest when I was a child flew open here. Although I had traveled both within the U.S. and to a few countries overseas, living abroad on my own was both terrifying and exhilarating! My Spanish quickly improved living with my host family, attending classes at the local university, traveling around the country, and spending a lot of time in discotecas with my girlfriends! In some ways, it was a strange, alternate reality to the life I left behind in Williamsburg Virginia. But in others, I knew I was hooked. As a student of anthropology, I loved learning about this new culture, its people, and its economy. Armed with a new sense of purpose (although I wasn't exactly sure what this was at the time!), I wrapped up the semester, finished my senior year, and headed out to the mountains of rural El Salvador to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. This was truly the hardest job I ever loved, but will share those stories another time.

This now brings me to DC. After spending more than three years in El Salvador, I pondered my next move. As mentioned earlier, I was drawn to this city looking for adventure and greater professional opportunities. I was also looking for a place that was culturally diverse, attracted people interested in the world around them, and a place that eventually I could make my home. Although I long to move overseas again and maybe live on the West Coast for a few years, DC is the place that draws me in. It is also the place that I met my husband.

Christian and I met at a traditional Mexican pre-Christmas party called a posada held at the home of some mutual friends. Posada in Spanish means ‘inn,' and celebrates the journey of Mary and Joseph in the days leading up to the birth of Jesus. We discovered on that first night that although the party was held in Northern Virginia, we lived just three blocks apart, only a few blocks from here. We, of course, discovered many more things about each other over the course of the two years we dated. Most importantly, we realized that we make a great team.

Although Christian's family is more culturally Catholic, his mom would have been pleased to have her son get married in a church. My parents, especially given the fact that I am a PK (a preacher's kid), also gently nudged us in this direction. We were not opposed to the idea, but had an unwritten rule we would only join a church that we both felt comfortable in. We did not do a lot of shopping around. We tried one church that although beautiful and historical, wasn't the right match for us. Then Christian suggested we try St Thomas'.  As we both lived in the neighborhood, it was a place, at least on the surface, that was attractive to us. Our first Sunday, we both felt at ease. Christian looked around and saw people nicely dressed in jeans and he was not the only non-white face in the crowd. I also appreciated the fact that this is a progressive, urban parish. From my experience, Episcopal congregations run the gamut from super right to super left and often the more liberal churches take the form of Birkenstock wearing, guitar singing hippies. Nothing against this- I own four pairs of Birks myself! But the congregation we encountered here is really more my cup of tea.