Hey ladies, hope things are going well for you all as we enter the final stretch coming down to next week. Seeing how we're entering the final stretch, I guess it's about time to introduce myself. I am in the middle of the picture below with two of my teammates Natalie "Schmitty" Smith and Chris Scott from the World Race.
My name is Nathan Hood. I am from North Carolina and am living there currently. I grew up in Charlotte since age 6, and after high school attended college in Chapel Hill. My mom and dad still live in Charlotte, while my older brother lives in San Diego, CA and flies jets for the Marines, and my younger bro lives in Boone, NC and is gettin' that degree.
I graduated from UNC Chapel Hill in
the Spring of 2008. I got a degree in Studio Art, which I will hopefully use more somewhere down the line. I played a lot of ultimate frisbee around the country with UNC's club team, and I spent a lof of time loving life and hangin' out with my friends. Some of the time that I attended college I was being sparked and led to do something out of the ordinary after graduating. Starting my sophomore year, through reading a few books by the titles of An Irresistable Revolution, The Barbarian Way, and Red Letters, I began to be moved in a different direction than many who were around me. I started wondering what it meant to really follow Christ, and to actually care for the orphan and the widow, to actually love "the least of these." As school went on I began to know God more deeply, and knew I wanted to do something crazy after school, something challenging that would give me the opportunities I was looking for to love the poor and care for those who were less fortunate. That opportunity came in 2009 as I went on The World Race.
Through the race, as there will be for you in Uganda, there were numerous opportunities to love and serve people who were not like me, including the poor, orphaned children, old babushkas in Romania, those recovering from addiction, the sick, the imprisoned, as well as contacts, pastors, and teammates and squadmates. Changed me. I met God in many ways, and heard him call me his son, and knew life was going to be a little different after this.
Since then I've lived in Spain for six months at a great place called G42, and moved back to Chapel Hill last summer to love on some fellas I know who are in college there. I am still trying to figure out how to love the least among us, and how to best serve the kingdom of God. I am far from perfect and so grateful for the grace of God and the forgiveness and reconciliation that comes through Jesus Christ.
I hope this summer to head to Uganda with some new sisters and have in impact there, hopefully igniting more love for others and a deeper walk with God in myself and all of us who are going.
See yall soon,
Nate
