Featured Alumnus - January 2024

As I take a step back to reflect on my time going through SCCS from preschool through senior year at CCHS, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to receive a Christian education and humbled by the sacrifices that were made to provide me with that opportunity. While at Chicago Christian, I participated in football, track, band, mock trial, student council, and senior activities committee. At CCHS I made lifelong friends whose kids occasionally call me “uncle.” From dissecting frogs and pigs with Mrs. Vilendrer to learning the states and capitals of Central America in Spanish with Mrs. Roozeboom (that song still pops into my head every now and then), mentorship groups with Mr. Payne, and Chapels, every moment, interaction, and experience was orchestrated by God for the life He had planned for me. One teacher/coach that particularly stood out to me is Coach Joe Hamstra. I still remember a t-shirt he had made for us that stated “I am third”—meaning God always comes first in everything. He took the opportunity to disciple us both on and off the field. Another coach/teacher who made a particular impact on me was Mr. Okuley. While I did not particularly want to be a “runner” in track, he encouraged me to push myself outside of my comfort zone and fostered a love of exercise and running that I continue to enjoy today.

After graduating from Chicago Christian in 2011, my best and lifelong friend, Ken Warren ‘11, and I began our college careers in Oxford, Mississippi at The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). While at Ole Miss, I had the opportunity to join and eventually help lead (with the support of my family and friends) a chapter of a national Christian fraternity dedicated to building and discipling Christian men. Through a social event with this fraternity, I met the woman that God intended for me to eventually marry. After completing my Bachelor of Science in Communication Sciences and Disorders at Ole Miss, I graduated cum laude and was accepted into a master’s program to become a Speech-Language Pathologist at Governors State University. Returning home allowed me to grow closer with my grandmother, parents, and siblings while studying the Bible with a few old friends from CCHS and some new ones. 

After graduating with my master’s degree, I married the love of my life, Leila Katelyn Otte, in Fayette, Alabama, in the summer of 2019 and have lived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, ever since. I have spent the last five and a half years working as a public school Speech-Language Pathologist for Tuscaloosa City Schools where I received Speech-Language Pathologist of the Year in 2022 and most recently received the Nick’s Kids Foundation Teacher Excellence award from Nick and Terry Saban for my school. After school hours, I provide virtual private speech therapy to people across the world. As a Speech-Language Pathologist in public schools, I have the unique opportunity to work with children in PK-5th grade with varying levels of needs, from working on social skills, and how to make specific speech sounds, to providing a voice or a means of communication to students who are learning to communicate with and without the use of their physical voice—all while sharing the love of Christ. Behind the scenes of all this, God was working in my life as well as in my wife’s. After about a year and a half of trying to have a “homemade” child with one early loss, God really pulled on our hearts to open up our home to children in the foster care system through the Department of Human Resources. For the last three years, we have been blessed to share our home and the love of God with seven children for varying lengths of time, with our current placements of two for the last two years. We are currently serving a five-year-old boy and an almost four-year-old little girl. Serving children and their families in this capacity has been the most challenging and joyous experience of our lives.

To tie this all together in words is difficult. As stated before, I grew up in the Southwest Chicago Christian Schools education system from Kindergarten through 12th grade. Every moment, every teacher, every interaction, and every experience (good or bad)—God has used it to shape my life. The challenging academics of Chicago Christian taught me to work hard and to try my best, even if that meant I failed and had to try again. The Christian atmosphere of chapels, Bible classes, worship, prayer time, mentorship groups, and service projects all planted seeds that continue to grow. I don’t know if any of these teachers or peers know this or not, but I noticed. I noticed the small things. I noticed the teachers who had adopted children and/or had biological children and the teachers who treated us students as their own. The friendships made and experiences I had played a huge role in shaping me to be who I am today. As educators or even just members of a community, we don’t often realize the impact that one conversation or one interaction can have to change the course of someone else’s life and how many more people one life can touch. I am truly grateful for my family and the friends that I made through my time at Chicago Christian and am humbled to be able to share a glimpse of how my time at Chicago Christian has played a role in the work God is doing through me now.