T o m B o e g e r

Following Jesus defines my core and fuels this lifetime journey and adventure.

I'm from Asheville NC but lived in Utah for almost 15 years since I graduated from UNCA. During my life's journey, an opportunity for a job in Bavaria for 3 years opened up. We chose to sell our home in Utah and moved to Germany! Wow! What an experience! My desire and prayer was to connect to a job in Garmisch while there. Sadly, that didn't occur. Perhaps that experienced helped open a future opportunity!

Anyway, while in 🇩🇪, Covid happened! Housing prices went up. I can no longer afford to return to Cottonwood Heights, UT Oh, I miss it, but such is life.

The optimistic way of looking at this reality is that God made it easier for us to choose to return to family in the mountains of NC, and that's what we did. Here we are.

Vocationally, I am an IT guy. My best job ever was at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health where I worked for 5.5 years (University of Utah). Before that, I was part of the last graduating class at Salt Lake Theological Seminary (SLTS was an evangelical seminary, yet we were physically located in the heart of LDS culture). Upon graduation, and to this day, I never found a job that utilized my calling/passion. I didn't acquire the experience I craved while in seminary or after grad school either. :-( Wild and heartbreaking. So, I returned back to my old skillset, information technology.

I love snowboarding and the mountain lifestyle and I prefer living in or just below the alpine. No, WNC does not offer that, but thankfully I'm still in the mountains. At elevation, the Blue Ridge Parkway provides the wide-open view of God’s creation that I crave. Pisgah has quality mountain biking too!

For sure, there is not a day that goes by where I don't think about snowboarding. I continue to try to get connected to pastoral / chaplain-oriented ministry. I daily think about moving back to a ski town town too. We do plan on returning to a mountain town, but not yet. That's a future chapter, Lord willing.

In this beautiful chapter of my life's story, I've chosen and have been given the opportunity to raise my kids in Pisgah near family. I'm using my gift of encouragement that Christ has given me and years of experience in an IT job too. 🤙