In 2008, at 17 years old and still in my junior year of high school, I enlisted in the Army.
I went to basic training that summer, came back, finished my senior year, and graduated in May 2009.
By December of that year, at 19, I was deployed to Iraq.
Our mission was to detain high-value targets just outside of Baghdad — hold them for up to 16 days,
build a legal case, and transfer them to court in the capital. I operated the BATS — the Biometrics
Automated Toolset System — collecting fingerprints and retina scans, building profiles on detainees
that fed into the intelligence infrastructure. It was precise, serious work — and it taught me early
what it means to operate with discipline under pressure.
After returning, I transitioned to the National Guard and set my sights on becoming a military chaplain.
That path required serious academic investment — I earned a Bachelor's degree in Theology and then enrolled
in graduate school, all while investing in real estate, owning and operating a mobile home park,
and building a family. I wasn't dabbling. I was all in.
Ministry has never been abstract for me. I grew up at Victory Church — a congregation my father started
in our living room in 2001, when I was just 10 years old. He is still the Senior Pastor. Since 2018
I've served alongside him as Executive Pastor, helping lead the church my family built from nothing.
That same year I began serving as a PRN Hospital Chaplain — sitting with patients and families in
their hardest moments, in rooms where faith either holds or it doesn't. That work has kept me on
the pulse of real ministry and our local community in ways no pulpit ever could.
Then everything changed.
In late 2020, my wife Olivia was diagnosed with a rare form of appendix cancer. A 14-hour surgery.
Months of recovery. She is still cancer free today.
We barely had time to exhale before I received my own news — a small brain tumor.
That was the moment I stopped deferring the big questions.
I made the hard decision to pivot out of military chaplaincy and into entrepreneurship and focused ministry.
We sold the mobile home park. We stopped being stressed landlords and became community-invested business
owners — purchasing frozen yogurt stores in January 2024 and operating under a licensing agreement.
By October 2025 we had acquired the intellectual property outright. In December 2025 we began building
our own franchise system from the ground up — writing our own FDD and preparing to offer others the
opportunity to operate under what we built. What started as buying two stores became building a brand.
The brain tumor is still there. And I'm surprisingly thankful for it. It has given me a perspective on
the frailty of life that I wouldn't trade. Every day is a new day. Every opportunity to steward wisely
in our community is a God-given one.
Valor to Virtue exists because I lived the gap between raw ambition and faithful purpose
— and I refuse to stop building bridges across it.
Before the pivots. Before the diagnoses. The valor that started it all.
