My name is Elijah Pestana and I am a junior at Timpview High School. I am in the middle of 5 siblings and have two incredible parents. Contrary to what one might think, I don’t feel forgotten at all in the middle, instead enjoying it as I’m able to learn from my older siblings and also lead the way for my younger ones and not be the last to do everything. 

    

A big passion of mine is for the outdoors and adventure. I am on the Provo Mountain Biking team, where we train during the summer and then race in the fall all across Utah. When things get cold and snowy in the winter, I run distance track for Timpview as well as love getting up to Sundance to shred on my snowboard whenever possible. For my 16th birthday, I did a 16-minute river soak to celebrate the occasion… It was crazy! Even crazier, though, was how I convinced many of my friends to come and even join for part of it. 

    

Another big love of mine is music. I’m grateful for my parents who helped push me to learn the piano which is something that I’ve been playing for 9 years now.  More recently, I started to be part of the choir at my school, and it’s become a huge joy of mine that I never knew I even had beforehand. 

    

Something that’s recently become a huge part of my life is the Spanish language. I’ve been learning it for 11 years now thanks to an immersion program.  It was never something special to me until lately when I finally decided to “come out of my shell” and try to start speaking it to real Latinos outside of the class setting. 

 It’s been so invigorating to be able to speak this language and be understood, like some superpower that I had never fully unlocked until now. For the last year, I’ve been teaching English to a Colombian missionary for the LDS church through its EnglishConnect program and it’s opened my eyes up to so much as well as to have a greater appreciation for this universal language of English that I often take for granted in already knowing. I’ve also joined the recently created Spanish Seminary class at my school! 

 I’ve been holding a fundraiser to help raise money to go on a HumanitarianXP trip to Peru next year, where I’ll be there for 17 days serving the people.  I know that this is going to be an incredible experience where I’ll not only be able to speak this Spanish language but also have away-from-home experience before my real church mission which I plan to go on once I graduate high school. I love nature and feel so blessed to live here in Provo where we’re just surrounded by beauty!