MORE ABOUT JESS

Hey everyone – it’s Jess! I was raised in the heart of Amish country, Holmes County, Ohio. I grew up in the country with plenty of space to roam under the care of my parents, Toby and Martha Swartzentruber. I learned hard work at a young age watching my dad run his own masonry business and my mom host a super cute B&B where a hot breakfast is delivered each morning in a handwoven basket. Following in their tracks, I was a persistent and high-energy child (just ask my mom) and a regular ol’ chatterbox (just ask dad)! Early on in my life, my faith as a Christian became very important to me and started to influence my life choices. When I was 18, I attended a discipleship school in upstate New York during the dead of winter. While this was a great time of spiritual growth for me, it also awakened me to how thrilling the outdoors can be! Between winter camping and snowboarding… I became hooked on the fresh air. At the age of 20, I dropped my current job as a hairstylist – surprising, I know – and sold all of my belongings except what could fit inside my trusty white Toyota Camry. I headed for Washington State, and thus began a season of three years of traveling, picking up seasonal work to keep my bank account full enough to get to the next place. From working at a tire shop, being a music teacher/nanny, working on my dad’s masonry crew, white-water raft guiding while living in my self-converted Ford van, to working at a drone company; you name it, I’ve probably worked it! During this time, I also started doing some mission trips overseas that were life-changing. In 2021, I had the privilege of going with a team to run summer camps in Ukraine right before the war started. I stopped in Germany on my way home to feel the soil my ancestors are from beneath my feet. In 2023, I attended a longer discipleship school in New Zealand hosted by Christian Surfers, traveling on to Australia and Indonesia after the program. When I arrived back home in November of 2023, I had no idea what was in store. One step at a time, I continued to pray for guidance from God for what was next… ‘Que cute guy (or CG for you Adventures in Odyssey fans) enters scene’.

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ABOUT

JEREMY

Hey guys – Jeremy here. To imagine my younger years, picture a little Amish boy sporting patched pants living in the countryside of Northern Indiana, always walking around barefoot and with a mischievous grin. Any spare moment I had, I was heading down to the creek with friends and my older brother (Carlyle) to build rafts, fish, catch frogs, and go on whatever grand adventure our young minds could come up with. As the youngest of seven children (4 boys and 3 girls) there was never a dull moment around our house. I’ve always had an itch for the outdoors and vividly remember trying to do school but only succeeding at staring out the window, dreaming about my next outdoor adventure. At age 7, my family left the Amish, and awhile later, my parents, Howard and Ruth Helmuth, decided to move the family south to Arkansas to care for a 13-house chicken farm. Every chicken recipe you can imagine – we probably had it! Although those years were full of long hard days of work, I am grateful for the grit it instilled in me. Later in my teen years, our family moved to Oklahoma, where I worked with my dad remodeling houses. One weekend, in pursuit of a new hobby, my brother, Kevin, and I picked up some ‘Walmart special’ mountain bikes and took to any trails we could find. When I was 18, I moved back to Indiana and lived with Kevin. Our mountain biking hobby turned more into an obsession, and before long, we were upgrading to nicer, more sturdy bikes for the jumps we were sending. As I was growing stronger physically and finding more of myself through adventure and the outdoors, I also began to grow stronger spiritually. It was during this time I began a personal relationship with God. Life was great! Mountain biking, snowboarding, racing, always hanging out with ‘the guys’… all my time was spent outdoors! I didn’t think life could get much more exciting. But there was this one snowboarding trip to Montana in February of 2024, and it changed my perspective… ‘cue cute girl snowboarding down the slopes.’