Caleb Longenecker Fox

It’s hard to believe this is the 8th year I’ve been living in Goshen. I spent the first 4 years as a college student and graduated in 2015. Myself from Chicago, I didn’t really know about Goshen until I started searching for a college. But, I knew Goshen College had a great reputation for medicine and I’d been recruited for the men’s soccer team. My identity feels very wrapped up in Goshen College because this was a place that allowed me to blossom into my own person. Goshen helped shape and form my faith, view of the world, and how I feel I am called to serve others.

Just this summer Nina and I got married. Nina teaches Spanish at Bethany Christian Schools and both of us were very intentional about continuing to live here in Goshen. When we were still fairly new to our current neighborhood as newlyweds, we got invited to a birthday party for our neighbor’s two little girls. Everyone spoke Spanish at the party, there was a slip n’ slide, and fun music – it felt like a total fiesta. As newcomers to this neighborhood, at the time, this invitation and sentiment from these folks were one of our most significant interactions. For us to be invited into their cultural world was such an amazing way to connect. Goshen is becoming such a hip place with a large Latino population, small business growth downtown, artists and musicians, large working class and the Amish community just outside the city limits.

We both feel excited to be part of the momentum that the places we work for are cultivating. Goshen cultivates the perfect platform for people like us who appreciate the Palmer Becker’s sentiment to be able to live into the belief that Jesus is the center of our faith, community is the center of our lives, and reconciliation the center of our work.