The Life of Religion: RJ Niewoehner

Graced by God. Those are some of the many words that strongly represent the being of RJ Niewoehner. Born to Rob and Natalie Niewoehner in California, MD, RJ was raised to be a believer in religion. He was also raised to have a strong sense of family values.

RJ, 18, has an extraordinary drive to achieve his goals and dreams. He plans on becoming an Electrical Engineer and has taken many steps already to achieve this ambition. First and foremost, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University accepted RJ into the General Engineering program for his outstanding academic achievements throughout his previous schooling. For most of his life he was homeschooled, but before coming to Virginia Tech, RJ went to Anne Arundel Community College and there he completed four grueling semesters. Throughout those four semesters he earned an impressive overall GPA of 4.0.

His drive of achievements extends to another sector of his personality. RJ’s greatest fear seems to include letting people down, especially people whom which he admires. The people he looks up to are the most important people to him because he doesn’t want to disappoint them and he wants to look successful in their eyes as well.

There are many people that RJ looks up to as a role model. There is of course Jesus Christ, Andrew Graham, the leader of battalion, the marines that were sponsored by his family, and of course his father. Being religious, RJ has developed the belief that Jesus was the perfect human being who made up for the imperfections of the rest of the human race. RJ, like many other children, believes his father is the most important role model he has. RJ always loved hearing the stories his father had to tell about his job in the navy. His father was a test pilot in the navy, so his job was to fly planes to their limit to discover how they will react. RJ and his brothers enjoyed watching the videos his father showed them, but his mother, on the other hand, would never watch these videos in fear of what could happen to him.

Living in a navy family induces many influences on a young adult. The drive and persistence to succeed are dominant in many children with parents in the navy. This is exceptionally true in RJ. He demonstrates this drive in many aspects of his life including his devotion to Jesus Christ.

Niewoehner impressive devotion to Jesus Christ extends to many other characteristics within his life. He was the sergeant of his Battalion, which is a Christian Service Brigade. This battalion teaches young adults outdoor skills and also disciplines them to become more accomplished adults. RJ enjoys thinking about nature as being “an amazing creation of God. I just enjoy looking around while on my hikes and just taking in the beautiful grace God has given to nature.” As the sergeant, RJ had many responsibilities. He was in charge of organizing service projects, planning weekly meetings, and ensuring that the peer leaders knew what had to be accomplished each week. RJ also engineered new ways for the members to have fun.

Using his creative skills, he ashioned a new game which came to be named trashball. This game consisted of dodge ball and capture the flag twisted into one insane game. This was an outrageous hit among the members of battalion.

If an activity includes the outdoors then it is RJ’s type of activity. He greatly enjoys the general outdoor activities that include backpacking, camping, rock climbing, caving, and practically any other activity that includes both the great outdoors and an aspect of nature. He also has another type of activity that he enjoys. This activity consists of playing with air soft guns. Usually he takes pleasure in having a war with his three younger brothers, Evan, Brent, and Nate.

Living in a family with parents in the navy sometimes requires moving around the country. This is exactly what RJ has done during his life. His family has moved a total of two times since January of 1989 when he was born. Even though RJ has only lived in two different cities throughout his life, he has had wonderful experiences in many different houses. His first house was in California, Maryland. He lived in this house for two years before moving to Monterey, California. There he lived for a total of three years before moving once again. This time however, his family moved back to California, Maryland, back to his home town. Even though this was early in his childhood, this helped RJ learn how to meet new people and not expect to have the same people around throughout his entire life.

RJ started playing sports at an early age. He started playing soccer when he was five and he played up through the high school years. However, he is disappointed in himself that he didn’t stick to playing soccer longer. He feels that if he hung with the sport longer he would have become much better in the sport and would have possibly been able to play at the college level.

Hockey was also a major passion during the early years. He became an immense fan of the Washington Capitals. RJ described watching the Capitals as being “fun to watch because they won some games. They were good enough to go to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.” This is also when RJ started playing hockey himself. He usually played street hockey with his friends. The games he played usually lasted an hour or two. They played on his driveway which was a fairly new and smooth surface. He had all the goalie equipment even though he didn’t play competitively.

Because of his devotion to hockey, RJ’s parents bought him much of his equipment. He described this equipment as being “decent but inexpensive. I took good care of what I had.” He had a nice pair of rollerblades, an actual ice hockey stick, a goalie stick, a goalie glove, facemask, and pads.

The general activity after finishing a game of street hockey was an excitement filled game of capture the flag. Usually all of RJ’s friends would jump into one of these excitement filled games. He described his yard as being the perfect place to play a game of capture the flag because of its sheer size.

In RJ’s own eyes, being involved in his religious activities is his greatest accomplishment. He enjoys every aspect of religion and believes in it deeply. Also, he describes the religious activities as being “fun and excitement filled. There is always something new to do with respect with activities available through the church.”

He anticipates that, once he has graduated from college, he will earn an exciting career position in the field of Electrical Engineering. Along with an exciting career, RJ hopes to continue with his passions of religion and the great outdoors.