kim Haltiwanger

Doug and Shauna have been members of Saddleback Church for eight years.  Doug is in IT at Kaiser and Shauna is a local high school teacher.  They have four adult children: Jonas, Hannah, Megan, and Adrienne.  Doug grew up on the mission field in Kenya.  His earliest memories are of listening to his dad preach in a language he didn’t understand, being translated into another language he didn’t understand, and road trip games consisting of who could spot the most Impalas, or his dad driving as close as possible to a herd of elephants before they charged.  Shauna’s father, Jaymes Morgan, grew up on the mission field of Schezwan, China.  Returning stateside he became a theology professor at Fuller Seminary, teaching the “Christian Response to Social Injustice”, marching with Martin Luther King at Selma.  Marrying in 2010, Doug and Shauna had four teenagers between them ranging in age from 13-15 years old.  Seeking ways to navigate these teenage years, Doug discovered the men’s group, The Herd, and missions trips through Saddleback Church.  Over the next five years, the family made monthly treks to build homes for the poorest of the poor in Tecate, Mexico.  These journeys of faith, outside the comfort zone of SoCal, marked the greatest spiritual transformation in their family.  All four children gave their hearts to the Lord and graduated from Christian universities.  In 2016, the pain of a gay friend, recounting his struggles with molestation and addiction, haunted Shauna but she didn’t have anyone with whom she could talk.  Googling, she found and attended The Reformation Projectconference in Long Beach, California that year.  There she saw gay Christians studying the Bible and worshipping God.  She saw their vibrant faith, despite the pain they faced.  This moved her to tears and to a newfound understanding of the great, unending, unbroken love of our Savior.  In 2017, as their family meandered on a six-week trip of Europe, Hannah came out to Shauna on a train in England.  In that moment, Shauna knew that God was on that train with Hannah, and that He had been on this journey with her from the very beginning.  It would be yet another year before Hannah told her dad.  During that time, Shauna took Hannah to a gay, Christian support group and counselor where her faith came alive.  They are blessed, having their beautiful gay daughter, and finding even deeper faith together on this journey.