Founder, Creative Director, and Recording Engineer
TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.
I was born up in Portland, Oregon, and grew up in the woods with a motorcycle and a dog. I was brought up in a Christian home, and music has always been part of my life. I remember writing my first song when I was four (I am still constantly coming up with new melodies), and then singing in choirs and small groups as I grew up. I went away to college in 1990 to study music theory at Point Loma College. There I met my husband, and we moved to Alexandria, Virginia and started our family. We moved back to Portland in 1997, and now have six kids (four boys and two girls) with one married so far, and the rest hard at work with school.
WHEN DID YOU KNOW THAT MUSIC WAS SOMETHING YOU COULD USE TO GLORIFY GOD?
My grandfather was a pastor of a small Bible church. He started taking me with him to sing in nursing homes when I was in junior high. I remember how the people there felt so loved and cared for when we came, and “anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble” (1 John 2:10 NIV). This is where the light came on for me.
HOW DID SONGS FOR SAPLINGS START?
My babies attended a classical Christian school called Cedar Tree in Vancouver, Washington in 2003. I volunteered in the preschool there, and the kids we took care of were called the “Cedar Tree Saplings.” I began by putting the ABCs they were learning to music, choosing one verse for each letter of the alphabet. I gave these songs to the teachers there on a cassette tape with the words “Songs for the Saplings” on it. The name (and the idea) stuck, and people seemed to like them. Now we’ve done eight albums in English and another fourteen in other languages since then.
READ MORE in an interview by THÉA ROSENBURG