2019 YEAR IN NUMBERS

A 10-Year Summary by Cassie

Cassie & Jordan, 2010.

It’s hard to believe we’ve officially started a new decade. When I think back on all that has happened in these last 10 years, it brings tears to my eyes. God has done so much. In 2010, I graduated from college with a dream to be a photojournalist and to make a difference in the world with my camera. I gained my sobriety and put my life in Jesus’ hands once and for all. I documented relief efforts in Haiti after the devastating earthquake, experiencing terrifying aftershocks, a hurricane and a cholera outbreak. In 2011, I lived in Nicaragua for half a year, serving with my camera for a Christian medical nonprofit. While I was there, Jordan came to visit me, gave his life to Christ and we got back together — this time dating as Christians with the intention of getting married. In 2012, we dated long distance, Jordan in NYC and me in NC, until Jordan got some sense knocked into him (literally) and moved a bit closer to the South when he got a job in Northern Virginia in 2013. That year we got married and plugged into our church, which filled us up spiritually, connected us socially, and gave us great fulfillment in life. Working desk jobs in our field from 2013 to 2015, we learned that there was so much more to life than having a fancy title and getting a fat paycheck. In 2015, we took the biggest leap of faith we’ve ever taken — we quit our jobs to do what we do now. We had no idea how much it would change our life forever. In 2015, we traveled to the ends of the earth documenting Kingdom work being done in God’s name all around the world and met so many beautiful people with stories of hope. Now five years in, we’ve worked in 35 different countries and have produced more than 350 videos. In 2016, we worked out of South America all year. In 2017, we did our second world tour, which continued into 2018. Mid 2018, we took a sabbatical to seek new vision as we thru-hiked 2,200 miles from Maine to Georgia on the Appalachian Trail. We prayed continually every step of the way, especially for Jordan’s mom who was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer during our thru-hike. We finished our hike just in time to witness our prayer answered — Jordan’s mom was cured of her cancer only halfway through chemotherapy treatment! In 2019, we bought a house, a basecamp of operations for our documentary missionary work after living out of our suitcases for five years straight. We renovated our kitchen, and got more photo and video work than ever before in North Carolina. We plugged into our church home and have gained a stable community for the first time since our nomadic life began five years ago. Whew! What a decade!

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All Caught Up

What a great feeling it is to be all caught up with our video projects—a feeling we rarely get to experience! We’ve been traveling, editing and hiking like crazy, and by God’s grace, we have delivered 11 videos to some awesome causes around the world. But before we share videos with you, we wanted to give you an update on what we’ve been up to since our last blogpost.

 

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On the Go

Hello, friends, it’s been a while.

Since our last email, we’ve been on assignment in Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand, Pinehurst, North Carolina (twice), NYC (twice), Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Cartago, Costa Rica. Ahead, we’re gearing up for Cassie’s family vacation in the mountains of North Carolina (what used to be an annual occurrence but since our life of travels has made that impossible for the past four years), more filming in Pinehurst, a project in the Czech Republic, and a kitchen renovation.

A magical sun halo sighting in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

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2018 Year in Review

It’s hard to believe it has already been more than one month since we summited Springer Mountain in Georgia and completed our 2,200-mile sabbatical thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. Time has flown by as we’ve celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas and multiple birthdays with family, but overall the transition off the trail has been surprisingly easy for us. We heard from other people that we would be “weird” after the trail (we probably already were), or that we would have trouble sleeping indoors in a bed (ridiculous, we sleep like rocks), or that we might experience post-trail depression, but that hasn’t happened (probably because we weren’t trying to escape from our everyday lives and actually really love what we do). We mostly feel more aware and grateful for all the little comforts of the modern world that we live in.

If there is any drawback that we’ve noticed since coming off the trail, it’s how many distractions exist and how easily we can be distracted from what matters most. While we were hiking it was easy to be praying for extended periods of time throughout the day, but it can be hard to carve out that time off the trail. Continual prayer is just one of the many habits we developed while hiking that we have tried to adopt into our lives off the trail. Another more obvious one would be staying fit — hiking close to 30 miles a day became a breeze, stopping not because we were tired but only because we ran out of hours in the day. We were in the best shape of our lives by far and didn’t want to lose that physical ability and endurance just because our hike was over, so we’ve taken up trail running, easily jogging six miles a day. Another habit we wanted to continue was waking up early. Although we’re no longer waking up at 4:30am like when we were on the trail, we do enjoy getting up before the sun to see the sunrise and enjoy the stillness of the early morning that seems so much more peaceful than any other time of the day.

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TONS OF VIDEOS & OUR BIGGEST NEWS SINCE 2015!

The past couple of months have been a heavy editing time for us, mostly in North Carolina, but if you know us you know we are always on the move. So of course we also made a trip to the D.C. area to visit our home church, in addition to traveling to South Carolina and Guatemala for filming projects. We celebrated five years of marriage and even managed to take a good ole fashioned road trip to St. Louis for a family wedding.

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Timpys in Asia (Part 3)

We’re back from our first international trip of 2018, which took us to several places in Asia for lots of different projects including an international Christian school in Thailand, a university ministry in Malaysia, a foreign exchange program in China and more. But before we jumped into those filming projects, we crossed off a few things on our bucket list and visited New Zealand and Australia.

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Timpys in Asia (Part 2) & Our Annual Year in Numbers

If you missed Timpys in Asia Part 1, click here to read the blog post about our time in Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia and to see more pictures like these…

Picking up where we left off on our last blog post, we departed the hot and humid jungle town of Sanggau on the island of Borneo in Indonesia and 36 travel hours later [via car, plane, and train], we arrived in the chilly city of Busan, South Korea. All our projects for this overseas mission were in Southeast Asia where summer is in full force year round with the exception of this project in South Korea. Busan city is about the same latitude as North Carolina and since it was now November, we got to experience the beautiful colors of autumn but had to pack a whole different wardrobe for this one project. Our down jackets and close-toed shoes were definitely necessary, since temperatures were between 30 and 50 degrees! On the three-hour train ride from Seoul to Busan we traversed the entire length of the country from the northern border to the southern tip, and got to see the changing landscapes from bustling city to beautiful mountainous farmland. South Korea appeared to be a very well off country, far more advanced and Westernized than all the other countries we’d visited on our tour of Asia so far, and that’s precisely the reason why we were there!

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Timpys in Asia (Part 1)

Thailand

We had a lot of work ahead of us for our five weeks in Asia, but first, we had to build in time for a big bucket list item. A trip to Southeast Asia would not have been complete without seeing Thailand, which is why we actually started our trip there, just for vacation. Cassie’s been dreaming of visiting Thailand ever since her sister traveled there more than a decade ago to scuba dive. Now that dream became a reality.

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Summer in Moldova

Sometimes when someone tells you about a place where they’ve had a wonderful experience, you aren’t sure if their experience was swayed by their personal circumstance or if it truly is an objective review of a place’s culture and setting. That’s how I felt when one of my (Cassie’s) friends told us we were going to LOVE Moldova, the teeny-tiny landlocked country in between Romania and Ukraine, and the poorest country in Europe.

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Nicaragua to NYC to NC

We’ve been stateside for seven weeks now and EVERYONE has been asking us — “What have you been up to?!” With the exception of a few filming projects in NYC and Charlotte, the answer is “EDITING!” We have lots of videos we’re excited to share with you!

The month of May marked the fourth time we’ve visited AMOS Health and Hope in the past six years. Each time we go back, we see improvements in Nicaragua — both in the Nicaraguan infrastructure and in the lives of people living in the communities where AMOS works. This year, AMOS is celebrating their 10th anniversary, and we had the opportunity to film and produce their anniversary video. It’s our honor to share with you the below video, which dives deep into the foundational approach of the organization that really began 50 years ago, and on through the organization’s growing impact in the lives of Nicaraguans so they everyone can enjoy health and hope.

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