In 1997, I was born in Wisconsin, USA. A few years later, my family moved to Northwest Indiana, where our extended family was located. No matter where my family lived, my parents did what they could to point my sister, brother, and me to Christ. At the age of seven, I accepted Jesus as my personal Savior. As I continued to grow in my faith and understanding of Christ, my parents brought me around the world at the age of nine to help and encourage the Widups in the country of Vanuatu. From that moment on, I wanted to be a missionary! The journey of getting to missions was not that easy. In my last two years of high school and first year of college, I did not have much spiritual growth and was losing my desire to serve Christ in the places he wanted me. The summer of my sophomore year of college, I returned to Vanuatu to visit Mikaela Widup for her 18th birthday. It was during that trip where I realized I was denying what Christ had planned for me and trying to walk my own path because of fear. I thank the Lord for his redeeming grace.

We first met when our families became friends way back in 2003 when we were only 6 and 7 years old. Our two families called Bethel Church home and continued a close friendship even though it was often long-distance whenever Marcus' family was overseas. While we were dating in 2017, the conversation about missions came up. Individually we believed the Lord was leading us into missions. In 2018 we got married, which is when our world started playing tricks on us. We would see a nice house, a cool vacation post, or that perfect family photo and think how much easier life would be to stay in the United States. When Sierra's college heard about our possible plans to move abroad, they asked her about going to Jakarta, Indonesia, for her student teaching. While we were making the decision of Sierra going to Indonesia and Marcus staying in the USA, we started seeing how the Lord was paving our path for missions. Everything was perfectly planned, and it seemed like no matter where we turned, the path was leading us abroad! Our hearts were opened, and we committed the next few years of our lives to international missions. After much prayer, we decided to return to Vanuatu. We choose to serve in Vanuatu not because it's where Marcus grew up but because there where needs that, as a family, we could fill. Marcus supports Bible translators living in remote villages along with discipling locals, while Sierra will be developing a school curriculum in their language, training teachers, and teaching. Marcus and Sierra's biggest desire is to see their children come to know the Lord at a young age.