Matthew grew up in church and was saved at a young age but drifted away from God in middle and highschool. When he went to University of Central Florida to study Electrical Engineering, he did not go to a church, wasn’t connected with any believers or campus ministry there, and drifted farther from the Lord. Eventually, he changed to Florida Polytechnic University where there was a very large, strong campus ministry in the face of a large population of strong atheists. Under these circumstances, Matthew returned to the Lord, his faith was greatly strengthened, he became close to the Lord, and he saw how much God still desired and loved him and had had big plans for his life, though he wasn’t sure what.
After Matthew graduated, the asteroid mining company he dreamed of working for dissolved, and he could not seem to get interviews, making him feel like people were blinded to his resume. Matthew began exploring other options, including a missionary position, and was met with many other closed doors. Eventually, he reconnected with Camille, who he had become friends with at Florida Poly. When she joined Compassionate Hope, he also became connected with them.
Having always been interested in languages and seeing a use for Thai, Matthew decided to study Thai, but, due to a lack of resources like are available for many other languages, he had to research and learn about language learning in general to figure out how to develop his own plan and find or create his own resources for learning Thai. He eventually found good information about theories of language learning and began implementing them to learn from shows and movies in Thai, since theories suggested that true, deep language acquisition really happens through comprehensible input. This was difficult at first because much of the input from the shows was not comprehensible at first.
During this time, Matthew decided to move to Nashville to be with the community there and God opened the door for him to start working as the finance clerk at Lighthouse Christian School, though he felt like he was only called to that position temporarily. He thought he might eventually be called to be a missionary but wasn’t sure where he fit in. Meanwhile, he continued learning Thai, finding some really good immersion study material after a while and making about 3 times the progress he had made the previous year in just about 9 months.
After this, Matthew got the chance to visit Thailand with Compassionate Hope, and meet some of those ministering and some being ministered to. Being there felt more natural than Matthew expected and he saw a place for himself there ministering to college students, the value of which he knows all too well. He also saw how he could share what he learned about language learning with the many students who would find learning English valuable.
Matthew’s current plans are to go to Chiang Rai and take Thai classes focusing more on the religious language, which he sees that he is still lacking, meanwhile ministering to the college students there and begin helping students with their English more informally while learning how to really teach English well.
