Erin and I began our journey to Washington State from Texas in the summer of 2013 shortly after I graduated from my Officer Basic Course. Although we had been together since we were 19, we were just recently married on April 6, 2013.

As most young couples do, we had our fair share of problems: moving to a new place, wanting to meet new people, and finding a sense of belonging at our new home. Erin and I went to church off and on during college and would go to Sunday services when we visited family, but it wasn’t until we started going to Olympia City Church that we really felt a sense of belonging and a genuine group of people who actually took their time to invest in our life. This isn’t to say the other churches we attended in the past did not take a genuine interest in us, but there was no real connection like we had at Olympia City Church.

Often times we would attend services at our old church and never sit by the same person two Sundays in a row. This was hard for us because we wanted to make connections and be more involved, but we kept missing the mark at other places. Early in 2014, another Service Member from my unit Joel Rivera introduced Erin and I to Olympia City Church. It was an overall new experience to us, because we were used to a free-standing building with a cross, stained glass, and a bell. Instead of arriving at what we thought was a church we met at someone’s house and gathered to talk about Jesus.

Outside of us meeting at a stranger’s house to gather, something just felt right to us about everyone we encountered that first time we went and as we kept going.

      Among other things, one of the biggest reasons we wanted to continue going to Olympia City Church was the fact they were understanding of the fact that we are imperfect people in an imperfect world. To elaborate on that, we would have people share stories of things they had done in their distant past or fairly recent and it let us know that we were able to make mistakes and still be a Christian and a follower of Jesus. In previous churches we attended there was this sense of being a “perfect” person or perfect “Christian” and we came to realize this did not exist.

Our time at Olympia City Church got better as time moved on. In August 2015, our daughter Grace was born and everyone welcomed her as if she was their own. Olympia City Church was not just about meeting on Sundays and not seeing anyone until the following Sunday, it was way more than that. We shared holidays, birthdays, and special events in people’s lives just as a family would. With Erin being from Texas and me from Indiana, Washington wasn’t exactly close to either of them. Although we visited, and had family visit, we still felt like we always had family around us by being involved in Olympia City Church.