My life has been saturated with God and nature since I was in the womb. I cannot imagine my life without either. My family owns one hundred acres of forest and wild prairie in rural northeast Iowa. This has always allowed for frequent exploration of the woods and river that runs through our property. Since my early days, I have had a keen interest in insects, river life, birds, clouds, and plants. This interest was fostered by my parents. They brought me to Environmental College for Young Leaders in the summers of 1993 and 1994.  ECYL was a summer-long program for kids at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. The program offered courses for children on environmental issues. I took courses in marine biology and recycling. This began an itching inside me to care for the natural environment.

Here are two photos taken on the Gibbons' property in northeast Iowa during July 2004.

 In seventh grade, my family moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. My dad was hired as the property manager of a ten thousand-acre private resort in the beautiful north woods. It was delightful to grow up among tall Jack Pines, black bears, tame deer, friendly foxes, and fifteen lakes. This is where I began to explore nature as God’s living visible garment.

In high school I spent a summer on staff at Covenant Point Bible Camp in Iron River, Michigan. This was my first experience guiding others to better understand nature in connection with their faith. Throughout high school I continued to dabble in such experiences as a member of a weekly student-led worship team for area teens and college-aged youth, and as a leader of a weekly Cell group for area teens. These were topical study, prayer, and fellowship meetings. Also, in the summer of 2000, I biked 500 miles throughout rural Minnesota with a team of forty other high school students on a Youth Encounter program called Spoke Folk. Each night of our tour, we stopped and performed puppet shows, led worship songs, and shared our faith stories with all who came to hear.These experiences assured me of my love for being in dialogue with others about God and creation.

Here are Christie & her friend, Tricia, exploring & enjoying nature at the Lake of Egypt, in southern Illinois, in March 2004.

My family currently lives in Iowa (again), in the same house in which I grew up. For two summers, I worked as a counselor at EWALU Bible Camp in Strawberry Point, Iowa, near our home. My days at this camp are filled with rock-climbing, leading nature hikes, guiding stream studies and canoe trips, living out in the wilderness in teepees and covered wagons and tents, cooking meals over open fires, leading worship songs, doing art, and studying scripture.

This is a photo of Christie and some of her Ewalu campers making sand pies at an Iowa beach in the summer of 2003.

All that I have mentioned has led me to where I am today in designing this major. My hope is to educate, inspire and empower others to care for God’s creation, as well as to encourage them to worship through creation. I hope to spark the creative interests of others by letting them experience God in nature in personal and tangible ways. I hope to instill in them comfort with their own faith and spirituality. I also hope to sow within others the knowledge that God’s creation is perpetually explorable and fascinating.

Here's Christie, intently looking for Ordovician fossils in some Decorah Shale on a Biology and Theology class field trip on April 18, 2005.

Find out about Christie's summer of 2005 Creation Care Internship.

Find out about Christie's summer of 2005 positions at the Northfield Arts Guild.

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Click on web community to peruse other CIS majors' web portfolios and life experiences.