Charli grew up in a small town, just southeast of the Lansing area in a family that nurtured her walk with the Lord and a love for photography. She attended Lansing Community College initially for photojournalism, but after doing a photo essay on an autistic boy, she decided to switch her major to special education with an emphasis on the hearing impaired. She received her teaching degree from Michigan State University while working as a bookkeeper for a Lansing law firm and then went on to teach both in special education and elementary education for a few years. She married her high school sweetheart and they have been blessed with five adventurous and wonderful kids. They have homeschooled their children (successfully graduating all of them!) and have desired to grow in them the awareness that God’s fingerprints are everywhere. Her family loves to go on adventurous hikes, play bid euchre, watch movies together, and go camping together. Her life verse has been John 3:30, “More of Him, less of me” and she loves it because it gets to the point of any issue in her life, without flowery words and yet it is profoundly beautiful. The answer is Jesus, not her accomplishments or what others think of her, simply Jesus.