The Passport Story

The story of Passport began long before Passport existed.

In fact, it began even before I was born.

When my mother was six months pregnant with me, my parents moved from the United States to Mexico for a work opportunity. A few months later, I was born in a small Catholic clinic—a towheaded daughter of American parents surrounded by a sea of dark-haired locals. While I was too young to remember those earliest days, they marked the beginning of a lifelong connection to people, places, and cultures beyond my own.

Some of my earliest memories were shaped by the vibrant sights, sounds, and experiences of life in Mexico... and later in El Salvador. Weekends were often spent at Playa Libertad with family friends, swinging in hammocks and enjoying the simple joys of childhood at the ocean. I loved wandering through colorful outdoor markets with my mother, fascinated by wooden spools of brightly colored thread, handcrafted dolls, paper kites dancing overhead, embroidered dresses, and rows of fresh tamales—still one of my favorite foods today. I attended a bilingual school, picked up languages easily, and grew to love the richness of living between two cultures. Even then, God was quietly shaping a curiosity about the world that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

Later, when Christ captured my heart, He also planted within me a growing awareness of His heart for the nations. Like many believers, I imagined that my role in God's mission might involve living overseas in another culture.

But life unfolded differently.

I married, raised a family, and eventually spent more than two decades homeschooling our four children. Although my terminal degree is in physical therapy, education became the common thread woven throughout my adult life. Early in my homeschooling journey, I encountered the familiar quote: "Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire." That idea transformed the way I approached teaching. I discovered that I loved helping children first develop a love for learning—and then helping them learn—not simply by giving them information, but by helping them see how God's truth connects to the world around them.

At the same time, the burden for the nations never disappeared.

Instead of asking where God wanted me to go, I began asking what "yes" to missions looked like within the boundaries of the life He had already given me.

That question eventually led me, quite providentially, to serve as a teacher and leader within the homeschool ministry of our local church. As our church searched for missions resources that would help children understand God's global purpose, we encountered a surprising problem. While there were many excellent resources that highlighted individual countries, missionaries, or short-term mission projects, we could not find a curriculum that was both contemporary in format and comprehensive in scope—a resource that would systematically introduce children to the nations of the world while grounding them in a biblical understanding of God's mission.

In that moment, a simple idea began to take shape: What if we created the very resource we had been searching for?

And with that, God provided the long-awaited "yes" to my own heart's longing to be involved in missions.

I began writing lessons, creating maps, developing country studies, and preparing prayer guides for our home church and local homeschool community. Slowly, over many years, those resources grew into what is now Passport to the Nations.

Looking back, I can now see what I could never see while living it.

God had been writing the Passport story all along. What once felt like unrelated chapters of my life were, in His hands, careful preparation for the work He would eventually call me to do.

He used a childhood spent in another culture to cultivate a love for the nations. He used years of homeschooling to teach me how children learn. He used a career in healthcare to develop discipline, problem-solving, and perseverance. He even redeemed the determination of a strong-willed little girl into the tenacity needed to keep building when the path forward was filled with roadblocks.

God doesn't waste preparation. He doesn't waste experiences. And He rarely wastes the ordinary seasons of life we so often overlook.

Often, He is writing a story long before we recognize what He is doing.

Today, Passport exists to help children discover God's heart for the nations and understand their place within His story. Through missions discipleship, our prayer is that children will not only learn about the world, but will also joyfully participate in God's mission—whether that calling leads them across the street or across the world.

The story of Passport began long before Passport existed. My prayer is that, through these resources, God will begin writing similar stories in the lives of children and families around the world—stories of hearts enlarged for the nations, lives shaped by the Gospel, and joyful participation in His mission.