roots coffee

"Blessed is the one who's hope is in the Lord...he will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out it's roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for it's leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit." (Jeremiah 17:7-8)

When we first moved to Louisville, I knew I wanted to be barista. I realize now that I knew nothing about coffee or what the title "barista" entailed, so I’m not sure why I was so intent on this being my part-time occupation. But within two weeks of moving I was hired by a local coffee shop called Vint, which happened to be within walking distance from our apartment. This seemingly simple occurrence dramatically changed my life in ways I never could have foreseen. It was not the part-time job that I was expecting…working in coffee became my passion and career. My fellow baristas were not just my co-workers…they became my family and greatest support. The regulars that came into my shop everyday were not just customers…they were friends and neighbors that I cared deeply about and who cared deeply for me. Working in the coffee industry completely surpassed my arbitrary aspiration to be a barista and reinforced my understanding that God gives us good things…even when we don’t know to ask for them.

I've always liked coffee as a commodity and drink but truly understanding the story behind the product allows me to enter into a new level of appreciation. The intricate attention given to growing and harvesting, processing and grading, roasting and brewing, come to a perfect climax when the once fruit, then seed, then bean, and finally liquid is consumed and enjoyed. It is a story that bridges cultures and unites individuals, inviting the ordinary barista to participate in the community this narrative provides. 

Coffee creates community in three ways. First, it establishes relationships with people around the world. If developed correctly, coffee roasters connect with coffee farmers as a direct source of trade. They get to know one another, they break bread together, and they share each other’s burdens. This sense of international camaraderie inspires me. Many coffee farmers put their life into their trade. In the specialty world, coffee plants in the Arabica family only produce about 1-3 pounds of beans a year, are harvested by hand, and sorted by real people to filter out any unsatisfactory yield. It is so important that the relationship with these farmers be mutually beneficial and conducted with integrity. When the farmer suffers, we suffer. When the farmer does well, we benefit with them. I’ve seen this harmoniously play out with many coffee roasters, specifically with our friends at Sunergos Coffee and Henie Brothers Coffee (via Coffee Co-op) in Louisville, Kentucky.

The second way coffee creates community is through the subsequent culture it generates. I remember sitting with a fellow manager and fast friend, Jamie, as she taught me how to make a macchiato. Not the macchiato you get at Starbucks that’s laced with sugar and capped with whip cream, but the traditional drink—a rich and flavorful espresso with a small amount of carefully textured milk. Her love for hand-crafted coffee was contagious. It was an art. Jamie and many others nurtured in me a desire to learn more and to grow as an artisan in my skill. The next thing I knew, I was participating in latte art competitions, attending coffee conventions, and reading magazines devoted to coffee culture. It sounds nerdy, and I’m ok with that. I’ve met some of the most amazing people in this world of nerd and I could not be more thankful for being a part the fellowship it creates.

Finally, and the most vital part for the barista, is the relationship with the customer and the pleasure of serving a delicious, hand-crafted, latte-art sealed drink to them. What is the point of intricate dedication to excellence in the planting, harvesting, processing, roasting and brewing processes without someone to appreciate the final product? The best part about being a barista is satisfying the customer with a consistent drink, and using that point of reference to establish a friendship. It’s amazing what happens when, as a barista, you know a regular’s name and their drink. You become a dependable part of their day. People could make their coffee at home or go to McDonalds, but they come to the coffee shop because (well, it’s better, but also…) of the community it brings about.

One of the hardest decisions we ever made was to leave Louisville and the friendships we established there, especially those surrounding Vint. I knew then that I could never say farewell to being a barista. It had become a form of art, an outlet to create, and a platform to serve those around me.  I knew South Atlanta lacked a specialty coffee scene, and the thought of being a forerunner of something non-existent excited me.

And here we are. In the middle of an adoption, house hunting, and starting new jobs, Kellen and I started a business: Roots Coffee Bar. Since we came back home and are intentionally seeking to put roots down here, the name is a perfect reminder of our original purpose.

Roots Coffee exists to cultivate community by creating and serving hand crafted drinks. From seed to cup, coffee tells a story and we desire to deliver this experience to our customers with integrity, precision, and grace. Roots Coffee offers a fully functioning on-site mobile coffee bar for weddings, business meetings, parties, farmers markets and other events in the Atlanta area. With a full specialty and traditional coffee drink menu, guests can have the opportunity to enjoy a delicious beverage made by a trained barista at the event attended. We customize the menu, coffee origin, and even the cup logo to our customer’s preferences. Roots uses coffee beans from our friends at Sunergos Micro-roastery in Louisville, Kentucky.

If you are interested in booking Roots Coffee Bar for an event, please email drinkrootscoffee@gmail.com and we can talk details. All of our proceeds are currently going towards our adoption fundraiser! Read more about our adoption here. 

A big thanks to Kenny Smith and Blake Nail at Sunergos (visit them here) for helping us set up, for Dylan Higgins creating my logo, and for Anna Pryor using her creativity to make it real. I am so indebted to Cody Chaplian, Jamie Bowers, Chloe Regan, Kelsey Hurd, Cameron Mulvey, and Toni and Chris Lavenson who instilled in me a passion for the coffee business, and challenged me to learn and give more. As always, thanks to our families for their support and investment in our dream. And we cannot say enough about Alex and Emilee Abraham who took these amazing photos for our company, and in support of our adoption (visit them here). We cannot believe the amazing people God has put in our path and how much help we have needed from them along the way. I hope we can even in a tiny way do the same.  

Roots is also opened during school hours at The Campus in Peachtree City, where I work my other job, and at Crosspoint Community Church on Sundays. 

our adoption story

“The place God calls us to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” –Fredrick Beuchner

KAYCEE: Kellen and I have been married for nearly eight years. Marriage is certainly no walk in the park; rather it is the greatest, most frightening, most significant, most muddy, and most beautiful adventure two people could ever take. And as we choose to truly commit to one another daily, our love grows deeper, and it is from this pair of virtues (dedication and affection) that our desire for a family comes. So in the summer of 2012, after five years of marriage and no pregnancy, we decided that was God’s way of telling us that we should adopt.

KELLEN: Adoption was never a plan B for us. We see it as a Biblical mandate to care for the orphan, and our role in that calling is to take the orphan into our home as our own.

KAYCEE: The idea of adoption has always intrigued and inspired me. We are constantly taking teenagers into our lives and often we become parent figures for the ones who don’t have a sense of place. It is a longing of ours to put the family-less in families and we feel like God has prepared us for parenthood along the way. Also, in 2007, I spent about three weeks in South Africa where much of that time was working in an orphanage. I still remember the beautiful faces of the children there and pray for them on a regular basis. I knew then that I would adopt one day. Adoption just makes complete sense because we have been adopted into God’s family!

KELLEN: Although we were excited about the thought, the process of adoption was what kept us from jumping right in. We knew people that had adopted, we read stories about other’s journeys and honestly feared the task of raising so much money and waiting such a long time to have our child. We loved that adoption happened, but didn’t really think we could handle it.

KAYCEE: In the late summer of 2011 we moved to Louisville, Kentucky to attend Southern Seminary. Little did we know that the dean of the theological school there was a huge advocate of adoption, having adopted two boys from Eastern Europe. Southern hosted numerous adoption conferences and many of the churches in the city had large communities of adoptive families. Something that seemed so daunting to us suddenly was very normal and approachable. In the fall of 2011 we went to see one of our favorite artists play and the whole concert was a fundraiser for adopting families. I was on the brink of tears the whole time. Near the end of the production they showed this beautiful video of the children that were waiting to join their forever families and I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I was a blubbering mess (to the discomfort of the friends that were with us). I just wanted those children. I wanted our child.

KELLEN: We didn’t know how to move forward, though, and just felt this weight for a little while. We prayed and asked how God wanted us to proceed and just kind of waited. Then in the winter of 2012 we were in a membership meeting at church and discovered the wife of the couple at our table was a social worker for a local adoption agency. We spent the majority of our time pelting her with questions. She was patient with us, and more than willing to help us. Her office specialized in the Ethiopian program and so that was her point of reference. So many families in Lousiville had adopted from Ethiopia successfully, and many while in seminary and working part-time jobs. After much prayer and many, many more questions, we decided to start the process and believed that it was God’s will for us to adopt from Ethiopia.

KAYCEE: It’s been three years since we began the unending pile of paperwork that still has not ended. We started the journey full of excitement and anticipation and then around the summer of 2013, with our name still very high on the list, we began to get super discouraged. We knew that it would happen one day, that day just seemed so far away. Life continued to go on and we had to go on with it and daily trust that God’s timing is perfect. Then, in the fall of 2013 we found out we were pregnant! It was a huge, staggering surprise. I didn’t even know how to process what I thought was impossible. But it was such an exciting time. As our Africa-babe grew in our hearts, his brother grew in my belly!

KELLEN: Many people would ask us when they found out we were having a baby, “Are you still adopting?” which I totally get. But, again, adoption was never a plan B. It was always what we wanted, but because of the financial hurdles, I do wonder if we would have pursued adoption had we gotten pregnant immediately. I hope we would have…but perhaps not. Either way, God blessed us with two children and we cannot wait to have them both.

KAYCEE: So that brings us to today. The time is coming and is coming soon that we will be matched with our Africa-babe. Upon accepting this referral, we have to have around $15,000. This does not include all we’ve already paid! Then six months from that time, we will travel to Ethiopia twice. Once to meet our baby, and settle a lot of legal issues and then go back a few months later (the agony of these months, I can only imagine!) to bring our baby home (the joy of this day, I can only dream). Three years waiting seems like nothing compared to the excitement of getting our baby soon!

KELLEN: We’ve saved and received a generous donation to cover about half of what is needed to bring him home. But our time is running out as well as our finances.

KELLEN & KC: Please, please, we ask you (we beg you!) to consider donating to our fund to bring Abe’s brother home. To bring our son home. Pray that God will provide. We trust he will! By donating to our cause, you can be a participant in the place where the world’s deep hunger and our deep gladness meet. THANK YOU. THANK YOU!

To donate to our fundraiser, please click HERE! 

a life well lived

"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

-Annie Dillard

Most of my life has been spent finding my driving purpose for living. I want to be significant...to make a difference...to do something that lasts. I've thought this "calling" was various things at different seasons in my life. Specifically, upon discovering my passion for translating Greek in college, I believed that my purpose was to go to the most primitive people groups in the most dangerous of countries and create a language for them to be able to receive the New Testament. In the late summer of 2011, Kellen and I moved to Louisville to go to Southern Seminary in order to study languages and pursue this endeavor.

Although our path did not continue down the route of Linguistic studies, this time in Kentucky was some of our most life-changing years. We were able to take classes together and enjoy the processes of studying, learning and growing academically and spiritually. We were beyond blessed to be a part of the family at Sojourn Church and to learn under amazing pastors and teachers there. Kellen was able to teach at a prestigious Latin school, which he enjoyed immensely, and I was able to manage a coffee shop in the same community. We lived within walking distance from school and work, in the sweetest and quaintest little village of the city. The regulars at my coffee shop were also my neighbors, the servers where we ate and the merchants where we shopped. It was a magical time of life where we learned to simply appreciate each other and got to know some amazing people.

More than anything, though, the greatest part of our time in Louisville was grasping more of the gospel, of what Christ has done, and how I can rest in that identity. I always knew that I was saved by grace, but this season away allowed me to really understand the beauty and freedom of it all. I don't have to do something glamorous with my life. I don't have to translate the Bible. I don't have to live in a foreign country in a straw hut for God to love me and accept me. For most people, these are obvious statements. But for me, the mark of people-pleasing ran so deep, it tremendously affected me and even my relationship with God. I constantly felt the weight of needing to earn his approval, just like I did for everyone else. International missions is such a good thing, and I would love for my family to devote our efforts to that in more ways than merely financial, but God does not love me based on what I do, but based on what Christ has done. It is finished. I have complete approval from our Father in Christ. All praise to the riches of his glorious grace!

About a year before we moved to Louisville, I was introduced to a writer named Wendell Berry. He largely influenced our decision to move to the Bluegrass state in the first place, and then helped in the decision to move back home. Mr. Berry is a farmer and poet who lives in Northern Kentucky and documents the simple beauty of commitment to community, God, the local economy and agriculture. His writings inspired my love for creation and neighbor and challenged my desires for wanderlust, independence and liberty. Instead, his prose depicts family farms with deeply integrated communities that are extremely dedicated to one another. They celebrate together, suffer together, and stay together. There is a poignant dependency in his philosophy that my desire for adventure lacked. Not that Berry advocates for a dull life, not at all. It's just not adventurous in the pack-up-get-out-of-town sense that for so long I believed to be the way my life would have meaning. No, Berry fights for the adventure of sinking in, putting roots deep, establishing life for the long haul where you are, and using your imagination, creativity, and hard work to make it beautiful. Wendell Berry's words slowly reined me in to understand the risk and thrill of having a sense of place.

Kellen and I were able to meet Mr. Berry a few times. One of these treasured occasions was in February of 2012 when we heard him speak at the University of Louisville to their medical students. At the end of the lecture there was a time for questions and his answer to one question in particular affected me greatly and still remains with me. The student asked Mr. Berry, "What should we do to help the next generation flourish in their communities?" And, as he does, he looked upon the crowd with a peaceful gaze, his eyes shinning with joy, and slowly responded: "Give them grandparents. Give the aunts and uncles and cousins. And when they run, because they will run, they have safe places to go."

So we moved back to Georgia. We live in the town where we both grew up and met and where most of our families still live. We work at a school and care about our students. We have a small homestead with chickens, goats, and bees. We serve at our local church and raise our kids. We seek to live a simple life, investing in the people and earth around us, and try to live lightly and sustainably. Many people would say, and at one time even I would have said, that our life is boring. There is definitely nothing glamorous about it. I doubt anyone will write a book about us and I certainly don't think I'm changing the world. But have I found my purpose? Yes! Totally. It's nothing specific and there's no complicated equation or self-discovery sojourn to discover it: I am learning to completely rest in the gospel of Christ and am seeking to be faithful to whatever God brings. That is the good life, the full life...a life well lived...exemplifying the double love of God and man and learning to appropriate that to every day living.

Take for example, being near family. Living in Kentucky away from everyone we knew was exciting and invigorating. I mean, I missed my family, but it was nice being around people who didn't know me and the little brat I was as a child. But your family knows all your junk. You can't hide from them. Now I live really close to them and we see them on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. It's easy to neglect the ministry of mercy to our own families. We can be super pumped up about helping people around the globe in their need, but gloss over our own parents or siblings who are suffering. But by being a consistent part of their life, bearing with them and them bearing with me, we can be conduits of God's grace given to us in Christ in a real way. There is a natural vulnerability amongst family and, although this is sometimes utilized in manipulative ways, can be and should be a very redemptive situation.

Therefore, I encourage you as I encourage myself: be present where you are; be faithful to whatever it is that God has placed before you. Choose daily commitment to people, daily commitment to the earth, and daily commitment to the Lord over how you feel or what is convenient. Don't assume you are meant to be somewhere else. Don't succumb to the temptation of escapism in any form. Don't discredit the small, seemingly insignificant and mundane acts. Don't hide from people. Your presence is important, your work is valuable, and your relationships are the greatest investments you will ever make.

Let us daily seek to grasp more about what God has done for us in Christ, and may that truth deeply affect us and connect us. In that mysterious, magnificent, and meaningful process is a life well lived.