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To My SportQuest Family, With Love

Dear SportQuest Family,

I like to share with people that I have literally grown up in the SQ Fam, since I was just 17 years old when I went on my first PWP Project to Ireland, in 2006, and now I’m quite a bit older and leading and hosting projects that 17 year-olds travel on. Like many of you, my closet is full of SportQuest t-shirts and I get an odd sense of pleasure when our coaching teams show up to camp matching or we have staff retreats and realize during a hike in the mountains that we’re wearing 10 different SQ shirts! That first trip in 2006 was just a couple of weeks after a knee injury ended my college softball career before it began. Over the next several years, God used SportQuest to help me realize that my athletic gifts were meant for so much more than a college sports career I didn’t get to have.

This is me in Ireland in 2006, before cellphone cameras were really a thing and the quality wasn't that great!
Me and KV in Belgium at training camp in Leuven in 2007; I dropped and broke my camera and every photo ended up blurry (whoops!)
SQ staff and partners wearing favorite SQ t-shirts at a retreat in 2016
Summers with SportQuest became the place where I felt most at-home – it was where my passions and gifts intersected with God’s work in the world, and it was where I met so many of the people – many of you – who I love and have been loved by so well. In 2012, SportQuest gave me the opportunity to bring a PWP Project to Baton Rouge. In some senses, the first summer was a failure because I was an inexperienced leader and I was in way over my head! I might have given up the idea of hosting a project after 2012, but I could see the impact it had on the kids in the neighborhood, and SQ encouraged me to try again the next summer, and the next, and the next after that...The grace in SportQuest’s willingness to continue to invest in me even when I messed up was one of the greatest gifts I have been given, and it is a gift I seek to give young people who I am now discipling. It is a great model of grace that our Father, whose mercies are new every morning, gives to each of us who choose to take up our crosses daily. 

Coordinating the Baton Rouge PWP Project for eight consecutive summers has stretched me, shown me the value of seeking mentorship and partnership, grown me as a leader, introduced me to some of my best friends, and filled my heart with a passion for serving my home community. Because of the SQBR project and the year-round ministry in place since I came onto staff in 2017, over 1000 kids in Baton Rouge have heard the Gospel. I am so thankful for all of the ways SportQuest has invested in me and in God’s Kingdom in Baton Rouge over the past 7 years, and I know this investment will continue to bear fruit for God’s Kingdom. 

The SQ Baton Rouge team and some of the kids from 2016, one of my favorite summers!
Me and Amy in 2018, at the levy, where the SQ Baton Rouge team worships every summer before and after the project week
Coaching soccer in Belgium, 2018
Me and Becky, delirious on an overseas travel day after being awake for 24 hours...
Over the past several months, I have been spiritually, emotionally, and physically in the desert and wilderness. God has been faithful in this season, and so have my SQ brothers and sisters. God has made it clear that the new things He is doing will require me to step outside of my SportQuest home and trust Him to set my feet on solid ground and make the path straight. I will continue to be a missionary to young people in Baton Rouge and will be serving under the umbrella of my home church in Baton Rouge, Renew Church, beginning January 2020. Sports will continue to be a part of the ministry here, but the Lord is broadening my vision to include opportunities and partnerships outside the world of sport and adventure as well. 

I wish each of you every blessing God has to offer in life and ministry and I look forward to continuing to stay in touch and partner when God opens the doors. I plan to stay engaged with the sport movement and hope we can all continue to run this race together, even if I show up wearing a t-shirt that doesn’t match yours (haha!). 

Love,

Danielle 

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