Come in. Grab a mug. The kettle’s hot.

I’m an ASL interpreter and educator based in Oklahoma. Somehow I keep finding myself untangling complicated situations.

Oklahoma; wide skies, weather that does whatever it wants, and summer evenings that sound like locusts and smell like grass on the wind. I grew up in the Cross Timbers where the eastern woodlands give way to the Great Plains, and spent a lot of time out there, from working in my papaw's pasture and hunting trips to just being out in the open prairie at the edges of town that hadn't been built over yet.

People always talked about getting out, and I never really understood it. The first time I came home from a long trip abroad I stepped out of the airport and could smell Oklahoma, something about the grass and the air that I'd never noticed until I'd been away long enough to miss it. I rolled down the window on I-40 and just breathed it in.

I just didn't know it was different until I went somewhere else.

I wasn't looking for it, but when I found the Deaf community and American Sign Language, something stuck. I was a Deaf education major and wanted to teach, but Deaf people told me to interpret, so I did. 

Sign language isn't a job I clock in and out of; it's dinner over a table, road trips down the highway, and late night IHOP runs at 3am. The Deaf community gave me a gift, according to Charlemagne — "to speak a second language is to possess a second soul" — a broader understanding of the world, how people experience, express, and move through it in ways different than my own.

Just a boy from Oklahoma, blessed enough to be a father and a husband who daylights as an interpreter.  Point me toward the airport and tell me where we're going. Walk through my door and I'll feed you. If there are dirty dishes in your sink, I'm probably going to do them (I have references).

I work hard at being someone people can trust. Part of that is knowing my craft. Part of it is being the first to say I was wrong when I am. I haven't got it all figured out, but if I can help, I'll show up and give it a go.

I currently serve as the Interpreting Services Manager at DOOR International, a global ministry equipping Deaf leaders in discipleship and sign language Bible translation, and maintain a private practice through Scissortail Interpreting, LLC, based in Oklahoma City. Basically, Deaf people do cool things and I just get to be there.

But I'm a teacher at heart. Pouring into the people around me — my kid, my godchildren, a new interpreter, colleague, or friend — is deeply personal for me. So pull up a chair, let's talk.