Eden Burch

I was born in raised in Colorado by a beautiful single mother that taught me most of the good I know. My father wasn't present in my life due to drug addiction so my morals and faith sprung from what she instilled in me. I lived the standard life of a city kid until I left my freshman year of high school to study at a Seventh Day Adventist boarding academy in Nebraska where I also worked on a dairy farm. After a semester I transferred to another in MO where I graduated. I went on to study pre-med at Oakwood Univeristy in Alabama but during the beginning of my 2nd sophomore semester I felt a strong pull on my heart to go into the mission field full time. I left school before the 100% tuition refund deadline January 2010 and sold most all of the things I owned in preparation to stay on the front lines of missions until Jesus returned or I died. It was going to be God, me, and my two suitcases...for life. I finally, along with my best friend, after much fundraising and preparation got everything together for the trip and flew to Rurrenabaque, Bolivia in August of that year. We went to work at a boarding school/orphanage in the jungle. It was an eye opening experience. Most of our kids were sent by poor families that couldn't feed them, or were sexually abused in their own homes, others orphaned, some abandoned, one had even killed his own abusive father. I planned to be there indefinitely but the plan came to a halt when I heard that my mother had a recurrence of cancer and the prognosis was terrible. The church chipped in and flew us back to the states January 2011 where I took care of her along with my two siblings until she passed away on May 16th. Before she died she had me promise that I would take care of my siblings and raise them to her high standards. I indeed promised and am now raising them the best I know how. One is 13 the other is 10 and both are busy bodies but are blessings to my life in building character and keeping me focused on what is important. After mom passed away my focus became to find a school program I could finish quickly and that would support me and the kids in the future. I no longer felt the desire to pursue my long time goal of becoming a surgeon. After much deliberation I settled on the one year surgical technology program offered in my town, with the intent of moving to Colorado and buying a big piece of land near the mountains. That was MY plan but the big kicker is that apparently my hea