Family...

My family...

I grew up in Van Wert, Ohio. After high school, I spent a few years volunteering with Youth for Christ (YFC) and going to a community college. I met my wife, Keri, while I was working with YFC (she did not fall in love with me right away, but after I shoved a cupcake in her face she began to see that I was a true romantic).Keri grew up about 20 miles from me in Celina, Ohio. She spent her freshman year at Indiana Wesleyan and then transferred to finished her Speech-Language Pathology degree at the University of Toledo.

Immediately after college, Keri went to Northern Illinois University to get her masters degree in Speech-Language Pathology. I went off to the Moody Bible Institute majoring in youth ministry. After college, I was hired at First Evangelical Free Church in Rockford, Illinois and have been there ever since. Recently, I completed my masters degree in Transformational Leadership from Bethel Seminary. Let me back up a bit. In 2000, after we had completed our undergrad programs, Keri and I were married in

Celina, Ohio. We moved into an apartment in Rockford, IL where we were often greeted by random yelling and screaming from the people in our neighborhood and sometimes even screaming pregnant women. In 2004, we were blessed with a healthy baby boy, Owen Webster Early. Owen is a joy, he has his mom's great looks and his dad's crazy personality. In the summer of 2007, we had our second child, Miles Lee Early. Miles looks just like his dad...poor kid, the good news is he seems to have his mother's smarts. As a family, we like traveling to nearby towns for quick getaways like Lake Geneva, WI and Chicago, IL. If we do not have time for a day trip, but want some excitement, we do lunch at a local oasis...you know, one of those "rest stops" with fast food restaurants that are built over the highway. Our kids love to watch all the semi trucks and Keri and I love the Starbucks.