I was born in Provo, UT, where I grew up. I didn't really leave except when we went to Disneyland as a family. After I graduated high school I was called as a Missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Nagoya, Japan. I spent two years in Japan learning the language and teaching people about the church. I returned home in December of 2006 and applied to go to school at Utah Valley State College, I attended school there for a few months, then applied to go to BYU-Hawaii as a visiting student for spring and summer terms of 2007.
When I had first arrived in Hawaii, it was all new and I didn't know anybody. I met a few people during orientation that I decided to hang out with. One night around the end of April 2007, about a week after arriving in Hawaii, I went down to the lounge in my hale (dorm) to watch a movie with some friends. One of the guys I had met my first week was Sam. Sam came into the lounge with a girl he had met, he told us that she was from Japan. I was skeptical about that because she didn't look like 99% of the Japanese people I had seen. That was the first time I met Tonia.
Tonia and I didn't really start to become friends until 2-3 weeks later when she asked me for help filling out some paperwork for her to go on a mission. We met a few times so that I could help her and that's how we started hanging out. We started spending more and more time together, people kept asking if we were "together", but we would answer that we were just friends. After Tonia and I had spent so much time together and had become so fond of one another, we finally decided to start "going out". This was about 2 weeks before Tonia was to graduate. We spent almost all of our free time together by this point.
After Tonia graduated went BYU in Provo for Graduate school after receiving a scholarship. I remained in Hawaii for another 6 weeks, most time of which I was on the phone with Tonia. I returned to Utah around the end of August 2007 and we continued our courtship until I asked her to marry me when we were on vacation at Disneyland with my family in October of 2007. We got married about 8 months in June of 2008.
In July 2008, Tonia and I had gotten a job in Japan to teach English. We lived in Kagawa, Japan for about 10 months, our time there was amazing and very rewarding. One of the best souvenirs we brought home was our first girl, Kai, who was born there in Kagawa in February of 2009. We returned back to Utah in April of 2009 and I continued school at Utah Valley University (formerly Utah Valley State College).
In March of 2010 we were blessed with another beautiful baby girl, Kalea.
That is the story of how our little family came to be.
To be continued...eventually.
