Upon my second visit to Tecate, Mexico, I came across a group of local kids playing soccer with one another. While watching their game, I noticed that the players’ approach to participating in the game deviated from the norm. As opposed to playing purely to win, the kids were coming together as a means of having fun and finding common ground. Consequently, they were creating a sense of community among themselves–when a player on the other team fell, a player from another team would eagerly help them up, despite the differing color of their jersey. By simply witnessing this soccer game, I learned that through participating in events such as these, we develop our abilities to work with others while also partaking in an experience that is fulfilling.

Since first discovering photography at age 11, I’ve been entranced by the communicative power that photographs have. In the past couple of years, I’ve been most drawn to documentary photography, specifically missions’ photography. While on a mission trip in the summer of 2017, I had the opportunity to photograph my group’s outreach and capture the love that was being poured out onto the children at the orphanage. This genre of photography not only carries immense emotion, but displays the transformational power of the Gospel.