Irvin Lilly

2008 Undergraduate Fellow

My grandfather was a Navajo medicine man for the Native American Church in Arizona. My family and community emphasized the need to constantly preserve tradition, language and culture, while surrounded by the dominant and different American lifestyle.

I'm part of a new generation that straddles a cultural chasm. It's like 'iron sharpening iron,' two different influences shaping me into something new. I grew up in the middle of two opposite worlds, where I struggled to find my own identity and to develop core beliefs in the center of two truths.

I hope to return to my community and allow God to use me in a way that helps it.

I believe that even with God in universal control of all things, there are certain situations that just randomly occur in our life; how we respond to events for which we are unprepared shapes our core Christian commitments and how we engage with the environment around us. My FTE fellowship is part of that journey of engagement. I have always wanted to help others and ministry seems a vibrant path to do that.