Hi, I'm John

Native Washingtonian, bicycle commuter, and heart attack survivor. I have 5 kids and work in the software industry. I'm a Mormon.

About Me

I grew up in South Bellevue and went to Newport High School. In college, I studied Humanities after serving a two year church mission in Switzerland. I love to ski and bicycle. For the last 20 years I've been working in the software industry, but always at smaller software companies--never at Microsoft. I'm married to a graduate of Issaquah High School who has blessed our family with five feisty children, ages 7 to 17.

In 2009, I had a heart attack at the tender age of 43 while riding my bicycle to work, but thanks to some incredible doctors at University of Washington and an ample dose of miraculous and divine intervention, I'm still around to tell the story--and feeling better than ever.

During the day I manage a software development team. I commute on my bicycle 150 miles a week between the East-side and downtown Seattle, rain or shine (mostly rain!)

Why I am a Mormon

I was born and raised in this church, but still had to chose for myself when I left home what direction my life would take. I know from my own experiences--some miraculous, most gentle--that God lives, that He knows who I am, and that He loves me. My religion gives me a solid footing in world that seems to be increasing in commotion and instability.

Friends often say: "Oh, you're a Mormon. You can't..."

I like to respond: "I can do anything I want to. I just choose not to..."

No one forces me to do (or not do) anything. But I know from own experience that following the example of the Savior, Jesus Christ helps me to avoid so many of the pitfalls that encumber those who choose to go another way. Life's hard enough as it is. Why make it harder? His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

How I live my faith

A couple evenings a week and on Sundays I serve as the bishop in my local congregation. I joke at work sometimes that I have to go home for my "night job" at the Church. (We have an unpaid ministry. )

I love serving in our congregation, especially working with the teenagers. It's a great chance to help them make decisions at a critical inflection point in their lives that will influence much of who they become later in life. As the bishop, everyone looks to me for an example, so I try hard to set a good one. (My wife and kids will tell you, I'm getting better, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.)

In addition to overseeing the Sunday worship services and staffing of the different volunteer positions in the congregation, I spend most of my volunteer time listening to and counseling with members of the congregation, both young and old. We discuss everything from employment, to raising kids, but most often it's about making better choices and mending bad ones.

I'm humbled that our Heavenly Father loves us so much that he realized the only way we could *really* learn what we needed to was to come to this earth and learn by trying and by making mistakes. I love that He he trusts us enough to let us make our own choices, even if those choices are sometimes wrong. I am humbled that He sent His Son to mend the cuts, breaks and bruises caused by our choices. His commitment to our freedom and His tender and gentle mercy when we mess up teaches me how to be a better husband and father.

I try to treat my co-workers the same way I treat my family and members of the congregation. Hard work, sacrifice, kindness and respect are my keys to personal and professional success.

Why is family so important to Mormons?

John answered...

People always say "You can't take it with you." Well, while that's true for every material possession, it is not true for our family relationships. So much of the Christian worlds is familiar with the scripture in Matthew 16:19 where the Savior gave Peter the keys of the kingdom to bind on earth so that it will also be bound in heaven, but what was it Peter had the authority to bind?

Families! Husbands and wives to each other, and children to parents.

All the love, sacrifice, time and personal investment we spend throughout our lives in our families, will be able to continue after we die. What a great blessing to know that I can continue to enjoy the companionship of the wife, whom I love and to whom I've given myself and my life; the relationship with my children, for whom I've sacrificed; and the relationships with parents, grandparents, etc. whom I love, honor and respect.

Members of our church are uniquely focused on the family because we feel that we're making an investment in something--the one thing--that can truly last forever.
Kevin answered...

We believe that our families are the basic unit of any society, and that failure in the home means that we've failed as a nation and a people. We've heard that it takes a village to raise a child, and that's true enough. But our leaders have told us that the most important work we can do in life, even more than any professional pursuits, is to raise our children in righteousness.

Think about it. If each father and mother were just a little more engaged in their family's lives i'm not talking about controlling their family, helping their sons and daughters with the challenges they constantly face, the crises we find ourselves in as a nation would become much less. We'd more good in the world as a result. You may think that naive or unrealistic, but I know how much good one family can cause, and how much pain another can cause. We want to change the world, and to do that we need to change ourselves and help our families become better too.

What is faith?

Cary answered...

Faith is a huge topic, rarely fully understood even by people who talk about it a lot. In the Mormon conception, it's a step of confidence between mere belief and full knowledge. It's perhaps best described by contrast with these two extremes on the continuum on which they all lie. First, faith is not that passive thing we call belief because it's a principle of action. So for someone to have faith, they have to be motivated to put a belief into practice, not merely be content with keeping it in their mind. For example, we believe that Christ is the Savior, but because we have faith we ACT as if this were true, and follow His example as best we can. In fact, "acting as if..." is a fairly good phrase to define faith. On the other hand, faith is not "perfect knowledge" either. There is enough of an element of uncertainty about the thing we have faith in, that it takes an effort of conscious decision-making to test our faith's hypothesis. If we had a full knowledge of a thing, that whole test, and the faith to find out if it's true, wouldn't be necessary. Atheists will argue that faith is mere belief (and baseless, at that), but what I have described for faith here leads to a more "scientific" approach that Atheists would like to admit is operable in the minds of the faithful. The proper response to a scriptural assertion, then, becomes not blind obedience, but rather careful thought, hypothesis forming, and testing. As tests come back proven or unproven, faith will grow in the right direction until it approaches "perfect knowledge".