Dear World,

Well, here it is...the unavoidably awkward first blog post. Awkward because, as you write your first post, you rarely have any followers (which is no different in this case) so you are essentially writing to nobody. So...hello nobody, or more accurately, hello somebody, someday, and welcome to Missional Aroma, the blog for Miroma Coffee. To start things off, I've decided to provide a bit of history on our company:

I've threatened off and on over the years to open some sort of coffee related business (mainly because I have a love - some may say, addiction - for coffee), but I doubt it would have ever happened if it weren't for my good friend Jeff Hetschel. I thought that I loved coffee until I met this man. I'm pretty sure if you were to cut this guy that he'd actually bleed coffee. Years before he actually went into the coffee business, when I was still a coffee "apprentice" somewhere on the journey from a start with starbucks frappaccinos to my current daily consumption of black coffee, Jeff was roasting his own coffee on the top of his stove. This led to a small, countertop roaster, which eventually led to a gas powered roaster in his backyard that could crank out 5 lbs of freshly roasted coffee in one pop. It was at this point that "Jeff's Java" was born and Jeff's friends, family and neighbors began to experience the joys that only freshly roasted coffee can provide...myself included.

Shortly thereafter, my new wife and I made the move from beautiful Colorado to sunny Southern California and settled in our new home, which just happened to be about 15 minutes from Jeff's home roasting "mecca". About the same time, Jeff transitioned from a his role at Campus Crusade, which he had held for 25 years, to founding a chaplain ministry (www.tacticalchaplainservices) and began to consider expanding his backyard “roastery” into a legitimate business operation. It wasn't long before he asked me to join him in his endeavor. Being the coffee lover that I am and entrepreneurial at heart, I could scarcely refuse, and MissionRoaster was incorporated with the mission of providing coffee lovers everywhere with ridiculously fresh, fair trade, organic coffee while doing good in the process. We worked the business in Southern California for the next 2 years or so before my wife and I got the "Colorado bug" (child on the way + both families located in Colorado = Colorado bug) and headed back home. It was tough leaving Jeff and MissionRoaster behind, but we went with the plan to bring the great tasting coffee that we had blessed Southern California with for the past two years to the thousands of needy coffee drinkers in Fort Collins, CO.

To be continued…aka…I’m  out of time.