2022 has been a really big year for us in many ways. We served a lot of organizations and ministries near and far with trips to Malawi, Tanzania, Serbia, Portugal, London, Stockholm, Pittsburgh, and Black Mountain, NC as we continued to follow our calling to serve with our cameras, but we were pushed and challenged in ways like never before with bigger and more complex projects. For instance, we were approached by FirstHealth, the hospital in Cassie’s hometown that has become a regular client since we first worked with them in 2019, to pull off a creative project similar to something they found online— something very different from what we’re used to doing. The production was technically challenging, which involved hiring a lighting company to build a scaffold system for the lighting design we needed and hanging pipe and drape to transform a church auditorium into a film set. It was also our first time directing a large group of people during a video shoot, as 50 hospital employees took part in a social experiment about unconscious bias. It was a challenge, but the film day was a success and we were all extremely happy with the outcome, so take a look!

Another example of a project that pushed us this year was with an organization we have worked with in the past, World Villages for Children, which operates schools around the world where the poorest children are cared for, educated, and prepared for a career that will end generational poverty in their families. They had just opened a new campus in Tanzania and sent us to document several stories, producing six videos total. That all probably sounds like par for the course if you know anything about what we have done in the past, but the catch here was that we would be producing each of those six videos subtitled in eight different languages – a total of 48 videos! The complexity involved in keeping everything straight between the different versions and incorporating changes specific for each international charity’s country-specific branding and language was a new challenge. They also wanted the videos to be in formats that could be shown in theaters, but that was no problem for our new Sony cameras. Wait, did we mention that we completely switched out all of our camera gear in the middle of this year, changing from the familiar Canon brand that we have used for 14 years to a completely different system with Sony? Talk about a challenge! The videos came out great though and we are excited to share these stories showcasing the impactful work World Villages for Children is doing in Tanzania.

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How do you sum up half a year, especially one that has been so full of intensely different experiences? Our typical travel work schedule was interrupted by an unexpected diagnosis, which turned into a complex surgery, followed by a long recovery and complete healing. In just the past six months, we’ve traveled to 6 continents, crossing off our 7th continent just a few days ago— Antarctica! As you can expect, this update covers a lot, so let’s jump right in! We’re going to look back in time to catch you up on all that’s happened.

JULY in Moldova & Greece

The fields of sunflowers in Moldova were in full bloom when we went to document a mission trip for Moldova Mission, the same organization we served with in 2017. But this trip to the landlocked Eastern European country felt completely different than last time because the summer camp was being hosted in a new location, a beautiful plot of land that the local church bought to develop into a camp of their very own. The property was beautiful and progress was amazing. The amenities were much better than the first camp location where they offered a 30-minute window for hot showers, boiling the water to make that possible. The new camp had plumbing to make hot showers possible for all, a luxury experience for the campers, compared to the homes they come from. The camp was also able to host twice as many campers in the new space, giving more kids the opportunity to hear and respond to the Gospel. The Gospel was shared each morning and evening in the form of Bible studies, prayer time, skits, worship, sermons, and sharing of testimonies. This year, we were asked to participate and share our testimonies too, which was a humbling experience to stand up in front of 200 people and share the good, bad and ugly of our lives and how God transformed us from broken individuals into the Jesus followers we are today. 

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After our Colorado project with Christ Church Windsor over Easter, these Appalachian Trail thru-hiking veterans couldn’t leave the area without doing some hiking. We hope you take the time to enjoy this epic blog post of our 11-day epic camping road trip where we visited SEVEN national parks and crossed off several bucket list items along the way, setting up camp from our economy rental car as our base of operations. Because of the pandemic, our plans had to be formulated well in advance, booking campsites and national park shuttle tickets in very specific timeframes, leaving not much to chance. Our plan for this trip was the Four Corner States: Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, and we were psyched for it to finally begin!

COLORADO

I guess technically we got to do some hiking DURING our project, because the team did take a trip out to Rocky Mountain National Park where we strapped spikes on our shoes so we could hike a few miles in the snow to Emerald Lake. The lake wasn’t visible because it was frozen over and covered in snow, but the view and backdrop of the Rockies was surreal.

UTAH

Upon picking up our rental car in Denver, Colorado, we took a local’s recommendation to head to Fisher Towers outside of Moab, Utah. When we arrived, there were only four car camping sites total, and just one was taken. We immediately snagged a spot and hit the desert trail for our first hike on our own.

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We’ve had a lot going on and we have lots of videos to share with you in this post. We can finally share the fruit of our labors from our filming trip to Libera in November 2020, as well as some from a more recent project in Raleigh, NC.

In the below mini documentary you will hear about The Last Well’s 12-year mission to bring clean water to the entire nation of Liberia by 2020. Spoiler alert: they did it.

Going into 2021, we really had no idea what God had in store for us. But, then again, do we ever? International travel was still on hold, so we were excited pretty early in the year when we were contacted by Refugee Hope Partners to do a series of videos called “Stories of Hope” in Raleigh, NC. If their name sounds familiar, it’s probably because we have worked with them a couple times in the past, and we are big fans of their ministry to love their refugee neighbors with the hope of the gospel in partnership with the local church. We produced five videos for them, one of which might be our best video yet. Take and look and see which one you like most.

For many refugees, life doesn’t get easier once resettled in a new country. New challenges arise and many children are forced to grow up quickly and take on the responsibility of an adult in order for their family to survive. Elysee’s story is much like this, helping to carry the weight of his family on his shoulders, but his story is not over yet.

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In November, we boarded our first flight of the year.

It’s a telling sign of how unusual this year has been, not boarding an airplane until the eleventh month of the year, but we know we’re not the only ones who have been affected by this pandemic, and certainly not in the worst way. We went from six months of no work to several months of an outpouring of work thanks to the Foundation of FirstHealth, the nonprofit arm of the hospital in Cassie’s hometown. In fact, we were so busy that we didn’t have much time to think about our upcoming trip to Liberia until we were sitting in the airport. Masked and with our negative PCR covid tests in hand (required by immigration to enter Liberia), we were traveling nearly 30 hours to a country in West Africa to document the work of The Last Well. 

We had the opportunity to travel and document this same nonprofit’s work in Liberia in 2015, during the ebola outbreak and now we were returning during a global pandemic. Arriving in Liberia felt oddly familiar, with the temperature checks and hand-washing stations, all things we had experienced on our trip in 2015. To read the blog post recap from our trip in 2015, click here. 

We walked across the street from the Monrovia airport to our hotel around midnight, went to sleep, and were up and filming the next morning at 8am. This became a pattern for our four days in the country— long days of filming in the field with long stretches of driving on the red-dirt roads in a Land Cruiser with no air-conditioning, which meant windows down the entire time. Jordan shared a window crank with the driver as we drove behind three other Land Cruisers with the windows down and got covered from scalp to toes in the red dust. When we pulled up at our destination hours later, we looked like we were sporting spray tans. Wearing a mask was actually a blessing for those long, dusty drives. We had the same driver and vehicle the whole trip, and on the last day another team member got shuffled around and ended up in the front seat of our car. When he saw our janky set up, the hot-wiring to start the car, the peeling tint every time we put the windows down, not to mention the passing of the window crank to put the windows down, he joked, “Next time I know how to pick what car to ride in— whatever car the Timpys are NOT in!” 

Five of the American team members on the trip were also with us on our first trip in 2015, so it was a welcomed reunion, and we laughed about our shared experiences from the last trip we were all together, including the horror story that made it to the top of the list of our worst night’s escapades from our travels. To see our hilarious list of top 5 worst nights, it’s at the end of this blog post recap from our trip in 2015.

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It always seems like time gets away from us. Even when our work was halted for six months because of Covid-19, we kept ourselves busy with projects. At first we spent time doing things that had been on our to-do list for months, neglected house projects we always talked about doing, like converting the solid wood door from our dining room to our sunroom into a full glass door and finally putting house numbers by our front door. Then we moved on to the neglected yard projects like graveling our driveway and putting in a paver walkway to the front door. Eventually our to-do list dwindled and we started doing things that we had never even thought about or had put on a to-do list like pressure washing the shed and making and installing an outdoor shower. Cassie even got so desperate for something to accomplish that she literally washed the mailbox. Jordan weeded and de-thatched the entire yard and I got a black eye from hanging the hammock. We worked tirelessly on home and yard improvements until we couldn’t think of anything else we wanted or needed to do (with the exception of cleaning out our garden shed, which we didn’t want to touch with a 10-foot pole), and our house and yard looked better than it ever had.

All along, we kept a positive perspective, never taking for granted the fact that we had a home during the “stay at home” order. We often thought about how perfect God’s plan was to bring us here, in a home of our own for this pandemic. If we had still been living out of our suitcases as we had for nearly five years, it would have been a strain on us and our families to live together for months on end. Despite not having work, we felt blessed. Each day, we trusted in the Lord to provide for us in His time as we’ve relied on Him to do for years. We knew work would come eventually, we just didn’t know when, but that’s always the nature of our work and God has never let us down. As spring came in full bloom and the cardinals nested in our blooming azalea bushes, we were comforted by God’s promise in Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

By April, we had 20 cancelled flights, and many more to come. Our grueling spring and summer travel schedule to Philadelphia, five islands in Indonesia, Malaysia, Central Asia, Serbia, Greece, and beyond was no longer even a possibility. But we continued on with our to-do lists, getting to enjoy some of our neglected hobbies that give us much joy. Cassie scrapbooked years worth of photos, airline tickets, foreign currencies and other things from our travels, filling hundreds of plastic covered pages with memories dear to her heart. Jordan brewed beer upon beer as the seasons changed from his Pandemic Pale Ale and Leftovers IPA to his very tasty coffee blonde ale in late summer. We worked on creative personal projects too. Jordan is a talented songwriter and musician, so he wrote and recorded an entire album from fragments of songs that he’s had in his head for nearly a decade and some he conceived and brought to fruition in just one day. After recording his guitar and vocal parts, he then recorded his childhood best friend playing the drum parts on all the songs. The editing and perfecting of the songs (which is called mastering) took the longest, but their band, Scraps, digitally released the album, Decades, which is available to purchase on Bandcamp and iTunes and to stream on Spotify. Cassie started writing a book she never thought she’d have the time to write about our experience thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia. Writing a book is no joke and takes a LONG time, but she’s about halfway into it.

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Usually by mid-February, we are anxiously waiting for spring to come. This year however, we feel like we’re still waiting for winter to arrive! Forecast after forecast brings us days in the 70s and sunny skies, making it hard to stay inside and edit. Most days we do, but then on some occasions, we ditch work early to paddle out on our canoe in the lake across the street from our house or take a quick bike ride to feel the wind on our faces and the sun on our backs. With some of the azaleas already in full bloom, the tulip magnolias gracing front yards and the daffodils popping up, we don’t feel like we are waiting for spring. Instead, we feel like we’ve been waiting sooooo long to share quite a few videos with you, but now, the wait is FINALLY over!

If you recall, at the end of September we documented the New Wineskins Global Mission Conference, an Anglican global missions training conference that happens once every three years. More than 1,200 people gathered from more than 60 nations to celebrate, reconnect, learn and grow, and hear God’s call afresh for their next season of ministry. We had the opportunity of interviewing 25 attendees to produce nine video stories of the conference’s impact on a wide range of people — from those who have attended every conference for the 25 years it has been in existence to first timers who were financially sponsored from faraway places. It was a crazy four days of filming and photographing in the beautiful setting of the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina, and we were inspired by the stories we captured as well as challenged by the speakers we overheard while filming. With no further ado, below are just a couple of the nine videos we produced, but if you like what you see and want to watch more, CLICK HERE for ALL NINE VIDEOS.

The impact the New Wineskins Global Mission Conference can have on someone is huge. Rev. John Chol Daau is one of the people we had the pleasure of interviewing, along with his friend and co-author Lilly Ubbens. They co-authored the book God’s Refugee  based on Rev. John Chol Daau’s incredible, true story of surviving the genocide in South Sudan by running through the wilderness hundreds of miles to live in refugee camps for more than a decade. Many, many years later at one of the New Wineskins Global Mission Conferences, Rev. John Chol Daau heard the voice of the Lord calling out to him. This video is hardly the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Rev.’s story of being one of the lost boys of South Sudan, so we highly recommend reading the amazing book (we already did!).

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A 10-Year Summary by Cassie

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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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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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.

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