Hi Everyone reading this.  Some basic information about me is that I was born and raised on a grain and sheep farm from central Illinois.  I'm from the little town of Bondville, Illinois, but no worries because I was not born in a barn.  My parents are Marc and Mary Shaw, and I have 2 brothers, Ryan (22) and Brett (soon to be 19).  Our family now is all guys because my mother passed away from cancer in late 2004, and I am glad a lot of her shows in me.  It is amazing what God does through tragedies.  I became a Christian in October of 2005 and now thank God for bringing my mom home and though I miss her it was through this that God showed me His Will.  We raise corn, soybeans, sweet corn, a garden full of other stuff, and we used to have sheep.  We did the whole 4-H thing as kids and showed sheep at the local county fair, enjoy a vacation every year to northern Wisconsin for some fishing and relaxing, and are all 4 members of the Bondville Volunteer Fire Department.

The majority of my life has been these last 2 years that I have been a follower of Jesus.  It has not been an always easy road, but everytime I get off the road Jesus always finds me with his truth and warm embrace.  It takes a new meaning to being dead until Christ reveals himself to you.  In high school I was shy, academically focused, but didn't have any true friends.  After graduating from high school and a local community college I moved out of my house for the first time in my life.  I found myself living in a house that fits 30 people fairly comfortably with 38 guys as my house brothers.  The house name is Nabor House.  We are a agricultural Christian co-op house/non-greek fraternity.  I began to understand what true brotherhood was because my first year there was all about me serving the older guys.  We as the newbies were in charge of all the house cleaning and everyone in the house participated in the cooking.  To look on the brightside I did learn how to cook :)  After awhile I began to realize that a lot of my pledge brothers went to biblestudy once a week in our house (at the time it was only them).  This was about a year after I had started living in the house.  My friend Grant Hannah invited me to Crusade for Christ, a networked Christian campus organization.  My best friend Brandon also encouraged me to come to biblestudy.  I didn't know what real brotherhood was amongst other men until I cried on my good friend Scott's shoulder when I found out my mom was gonna die.  All these guys had something to do with the night that Jesus led me to a bridge at Campus Crusade's fall getaway.  That is where I accepted Christ with my friend Grant there with me.  That is where my life BEGAN.

Some of my hobbies that y'all will hopefully find very interesting our country line dancing, rocky mountain skiing, playing tennis with my little brother Brett (who luckily beats me most times :), playing beach volleyball, spending time with my dad and grandpa when they're in the field and getting ready for the field, reading about all the amazing people that I'll be serving with in Africa, evangelism with random people on Campus, fishing even though I'm not great at it, and there are more that you will surely find out about later.  That is everything important about me that I can think of, but if there's anything else you would like to know I would love to answer it.  God Bless you all!