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Stephen Collins’s La Vida Experience

La Vida participant and sherpa, and teacher's assistant for Discovery from 2009–2010

Strategic Projects Advisor
eMobility
Los Angeles, CA  

La Vida was my most valued and treasured experience at Gordon. What I loved was how La Vida provided an experiential way for me to understand creation care, spiritual life and community. I met some of the most inspirational people I’ve ever known on La Vida. 

I grew up in Ohio. I didn’t know that the mountains were so amazing and that they could bring me so much joy. I had just never experienced that before. I was kind of a nerdy kid. I put myself in a box and said I was good at maybe the SAT. But La Vida taught me I could do things like hike up 5,000-foot mountains with a huge pack, fast for two days (I’d never previously skipped a single meal!) and survive in the woods. It was a huge confidence booster and, to this day, enables me to approach otherwise formidable tasks with confidence and poise. 

But beyond all this, the most formative aspect of my La Vida experience, that I still remember and value, was a posture of intentionality. La Vida taught me how to be intentional in community, how to be intentional in conversation, and how to be intentional with my actions and even my very thoughts—whether it’s an intentional internalization of “be here now,” the pursuit of mentors and others to pour into, or a deep conviction for creation care in the world around me.