Jaydee used to love it when he heard Christians talking about their beliefs around him. Not because he agreed, but because he loved a good debate. “I was one of those people that was just like, ‘Oh, you think God's real? Let's debate. Let's debate this right now. I'm going to change your mind because that's just silly,’" Jaydee remembers.
If you’d told him that he’d be a church-going, homeschool dad attending morning devotionals with other men from Trail Life, he probably would have laughed in your face. But God has always had a great sense of humor, and thankfully, the irony in Jaydee’s story was not at his own expense.
Charting a Different Course
Jaydee and his wife, Chelsea, both came from broken homes. When they married, they made a firm decision: the patterns that shaped their childhoods would not define their children’s future.
“We were starting this legacy of trying to break these generational strongholds,” Jaydee said. “We’re not getting divorced. We are not putting our kids through what we went through.”
Jaydee was determined to become a faithful husband and father. He and his wife had four kids and decided to homeschool. For years, Jaydee believed he could will his family towards a better future. “In my hubris, I thought I could do it all on my own. I don't need some sky daddy to help me out with these things.”
But then, slowly, almost imperceptibly, Jaydee started to feel a tug towards the very faith he loved to debunk. At a homeschool convention, Jaydee stepped up to a microphone and asked Nick Freitas a question: “What do you have to say to the people who maybe see the the good in Christianity and what that does for your family and for your community but just really struggle with the truth claims of it?”
Nick Freitas met with him after the session and assigned him some reading, including CS Lewis. “It was very very confusing. I had spent the last 10 years building up these walls and these strongholds against faith and against God and I had all of these arguments. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t heard the arguments Lewis was making before, but for some reason, this time, it just hit different. Maybe it's because he was an atheist for so much of his life, but he just had a way of laying out these arguments that really resonated with me, and God just started using that to start pulling me in.
Honestly, I’m Really Confused Right Now
Then, sitting alone in a coffee shop, feeling lost and wrestling with all the confusing thoughts and emotions, Jaydee found himself in a conversation with a family in a coffee shop.
“They were obviously a homeschool family, and we struck up a casual conversation.” The mother could tell Jaydee was wrestling with something. Before leaving, she asked if there was anything she could pray about for him.
Jaydee answered, “Honestly, I’m really confused right now, and I feel like my heart is really hardened toward these things that I’m reading about God.”
He expected a polite promise of prayer. Instead, the mother and her children placed their hands on his shoulders and prayed for him right there in the coffee shop. They prayed that God would soften his heart.
“There was something about that moment,” Jaydee recalled. “So many strongholds and so many walls just came crashing down. I was in tears. That moment meant so much to me.”
Looking back, Jaydee sees that moment as one of many times God placed the right people in his path at exactly the right time.
Trail Life was another.
Finding Trail Life—and a Community of Faith
Around the same season, Jaydee and Chelsea encountered Trail Life USA—again, at a homeschool convention. By then, Jaydee had begun telling Chelsea about the spiritual pull he was experiencing.
“I’ve been feeling this pull and this calling,” he told her. “I don’t know what it means, but at this moment it’s too strong and too loud to ignore.”
The family decided to visit a Trail Life Troop. There, Jaydee met Troopmaster Ben Petrain, who later invited the family to visit his church. What began as a search for a wholesome, structured environment for their oldest son became part of a much larger spiritual homecoming.
“I feel like God has put so many people in our path at the exact right moments,” Jaydee said. “It feels way more than coincidence.”
Trail Life gave his son a place to grow around biblically grounded men. It also gave Jaydee something he had not realized he needed: a brotherhood of Christian fathers and leaders.
“I definitely don’t think I would have been able to break a lot of these strongholds I had been holding for a really long time if it wasn’t for some of the men that I feel God put in my life.”
A Father and Son Learning Together
Jaydee originally came to Trail Life for his son. He wanted him to be surrounded by men who would model courage, responsibility, faith, and service. He wanted his son to receive the kind of foundation that can steady a boy when the world pulls him in a hundred different directions.
But father and son soon found themselves growing side by side. “This has been a journey that me and him have kind of been taking together,” Jaydee said.
His son quickly connected with the other boys. He saw Trailmen who knew the Oath, practiced the handshake, wore earned badges, and carried themselves with growing confidence.
“He saw something to strive for,” Jaydee said. Jaydee saw something to strive for, too.
He moved quickly from attending meetings to becoming a Registered Adult and then a Trail Guide. Before long, he was helping lead boys, teach skills, guide conversations, and building foundations.
“To be in a position where I get to be one of those men helping to lay the foundation for these kids is just a privilege,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m worthy of it, but to be put in that position and called into that position—I’m just so grateful for it.”
Trail Life was not simply giving Jaydee a program for his son. God was using it to call Jaydee more deeply into fatherhood, service, leadership, and Christian community.
Shoulder to Shoulder
One of the things Jaydee values most about Trail Life is the way men and boys build relationships through shared work and adventure.
“You’ve got to put men and boys shoulder to shoulder before you put them face to face,” he said. “That’s how we operate.”
Around campfires, on archery ranges, during hikes, and while setting up tents, trust begins to form. Men serve together. Boys test their strength, learn their limits, solve problems, and discover that others are depending on them.
Those shared experiences create room for deeper conversations.
Jaydee found that relationships built in the outdoors helped him speak honestly about doubt, temptation, fear, and faith. Through Trail Life and his church, he discovered that faithful Christian men are not men who never struggle. They are men who keep walking with God and with one another.
“I started to realize that the opposite of faith isn’t doubt,” he said. “Everybody has their moments of doubt. The opposite of faith is more fear, because fear will stop you in your tracks.”
Christian brotherhood helped him keep moving. Jaydee and his son even committed to being one another’s “mat carriers”—friends willing to carry each other toward Christ when one of them is struggling.
“I’m not the only one dealing with this stuff,” Jaydee said. “I’m not the only one that deals with temptation. I’m not the only one that deals with doubt.” That realization strengthened his faith and equipped him to lead his family with greater humility.
The Wilderness and the Voice of God
For Jaydee, the outdoor setting of Trail Life is more than a backdrop. It is part of the ministry. “We were made to be in the wilderness to commune with God,” he said.
Throughout Scripture, God often meets and prepares His people in wild places. The wilderness becomes a place of testing, dependence, clarity, and calling. Jaydee sees that pattern continuing through Trail Life as boys and men step away from distraction and enter a setting where they can work, listen, lead, and grow.
On one Troop campout, boys planned meals, led worship, practiced archery, fished, folded flags, wrestled, played football, and learned practical skills. Jaydee loved watching them experience both freedom and responsibility. “They got to be a little wild,” he said. “But we also got to learn some practical skills.”
His favorite moments come when a boy overcomes fear, leads a prayer, plans an activity, or suddenly understands a biblical truth. “Whenever we get to put boys in a position of leadership and you start seeing those click and aha moments—those are always my favorite moments.”
A New Picture of Manhood
Jaydee’s understanding of fatherhood has also been shaped by stories of courage, sacrifice, brotherhood, and redemption. A lifelong admirer of J.R.R. Tolkien, he especially identifies with Aragorn, a man burdened by the failures in his family line but determined not to repeat them.
Jaydee understands that fear. He spent years worrying that he would become like the men whose choices had wounded his family. But in Aragorn, he saw a leader formed through service—a man who protected others long before accepting a crown.
“What he does through excruciating experiences, being a protector, and being somebody of service develops him into somebody worthy of leadership,” Jaydee said. That picture resonated deeply with his own desire to break generational patterns.
But Jaydee also learned that biblical masculinity is not merely strength, toughness, or heroism. It includes tenderness. “As much as your kids need to see the warrior, they need to see the tenderness, too,” he said. “You have to be able to get down with them on eye level and have a heart-to-heart conversation.”
Trail Life has given Jaydee a place to practice both—to become a father who protects and serves, who challenges and listens, who leads with conviction and kneels in prayer.
God at Work in a Family
The transformation has extended far beyond Jaydee. At first, he feared that returning to faith might create division in his marriage. Chelsea had not grown up in church, and Jaydee had spent years openly opposing religion.
Telling her that his heart was changing required humility. “It felt like the biggest piece of humble pie I had ever eaten,” he said.
But Chelsea responded with patience and grace. She listened, asked questions, attended church, and began exploring faith alongside him.
“She has learned to trust me to lead our family,” Jaydee said. “She was so graceful and so open.”
Over time, Chelsea began forming relationships with other Christian and homeschooling mothers. She started praying and developing her own relationship with God.
Their children began changing, too. “They’re having little worship concerts in the living room to the songs we’re playing in church,” Jaydee said. “They want to talk about God at bedtime. They want to read their Jesus Storybook Bible. It’s just been so cool.”
Jaydee now serves in his church’s worship band, helps with children, and responds when members of the church need practical assistance.
A man who once resisted faith now finds himself surrounded by Christian community and actively serving within it. “A year ago, I would never have thought I would be in that position.”
Part of a Greater Story
Jaydee is quick to say that the journey has not been easy. Surrendering control, learning to worship, and opening his heart to God have all required humility. Old walls continue to fall, and new struggles still arise. But he no longer believes he has to overcome them alone.
“Those walls, whether I like it or not, I’ve just been praying about it, and they’ve just been tumbling down.”
Jaydee’s story is not ultimately about a man who argued his way back to God or rebuilt his family through sheer willpower. It is the story of a faithful God who pursued him through books, conversations, prayer, the wilderness, a Troop, a church, and a brotherhood of Christian men. It is the story of a father who came looking for something good for his son and discovered that God was calling him, too.
“And Trail Life has been a huge part of that,” Jaydee said.
Through Trail Life, God gave Jaydee and his son a place to grow together. He gave Jaydee brothers who would stand shoulder to shoulder with him. He gave his family a doorway into church, worship, service, and community.
And He gave a father who once believed he had to do everything alone a new understanding of strength: Strength is surrender. Leadership is service. Manhood is courage joined with tenderness. And no one completes the journey alone.
