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Well, let's see here... Where to start? At the beginning I suppose...
 To
begin with, there were these two people named Philip
Wood and Nancy Houser. They were both studying to become doctors. Philip was from England, and
Nancy was from Canada. They met while at a medical conference, and a few years later, in 1972, were
married. They were both planning to become missionaries, and shortly after being married, arrived in
Nyankunde, Zaire (big country right in the middle of Africa) to begin working at the hospital there.
 A
few years later, in 1978, I was born. Wasn't
I cute? Life for the first 9 years of my life was pretty idyllic. After attending a French
kindergarten with some of my  French
friends, I was homeschooled in grades 1 through 4. After finishing classes at 10 or 11 in the morning,
there was plenty of time left in the day to run around and play outside, building forts, exploring, and just generally
having a grand old time.
 In
1987, our family left Zaire and returned
to Canada (via England, where a lot of my Dad's relatives live) for a year's furlough. It was a big
change, but I got along ok. I got to go to this spiffy school called Royal
St. George's College. Suddenly, school took up the whole day, and you had to get all dressed up for it and
sit in classrooms with other people... very strange. I enjoyed playing in the band and did well
academically, though, so it was all good.
 Then,
in 1988, our family returned to Africa, but this time
to Liberia, on the west coast of Africa. Liberia was a little different from Zaire; we were close to
the big capital city of Monrovia, the climate was a little more humid and warmer, but all in all it was still
Africa. We lived, and my parents worked, on the compound of the radio station ELWA. ELWA was a Christian
radio station broadcasting throughout West Africa. I attended ELWA Academy there. School started at
7:30 am and finished at 1 pm, so again we had lots of fun building forts and riding bikes and going swimming
after school was over (ELWA was located right on the ocean).
 Unfortunately,
in early 1990, civil war broke out in Liberia and we were forced to evacuate the country. We returned
to Canada, where mom and dad became the Canadian directors of WEC
International, and Tim and I started school at Hillfield-Strathallan
College in Hamilton, Tim in grade 5 and I in grade 9. Adjusting to Canada was again a big change,
especially since I was now in my teenage years. It was a little hard at times, but I eventually began to
figure out how things worked.
 After
dutifully putting in my time in high school (actually, it wasn't that bad), it was time to go
on to university. I chose the University of
Waterloo, where I studied Computer Engineering.
Engineering at Waterloo is by default a co-op program, so I got to intersperse a few work terms with my school
terms. I used some of those work terms to work for Mission
Aviation Fellowship in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Redlands, California, and Kampala, Uganda and
IBM in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
And now, at long last, I have finally finished my university career and am a free man! What will happen
next in the action-packed life of Jeremie H.B. Wood? Who knows? Tune in again for my (hopefully not
too infrequent) news updates to find out!
For more photos of my life, click on the images or check out my Photo Gallery.
P.S. Some other stuff I wanted to include here, but almost forgot: a few reflections on what it means to be
an MK (Missionary Kid). The first is the poem, "Who Am I?" written by
an anonymous MK. I can relate to a lot of what it says in that poem. The other is this hilarious-but-true
list of ways to tell you're an MK, compiled by Andy and Deborah Kerr.
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