Uprooted and Renewed: Jonathan "Boo" Powell on 22 Years in Ukraine and Coming Home

<p>What does it mean to leave everything behind — your country, your career plans, your language — and build a life somewhere else? And what happens when that life is suddenly torn away?</p><p>In this episode of Complex Creatures, Rev. Dr. Jarrod Longbons sits down with his friend Jonathan "Boo" Powell — Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Christian Campus Fellowship (CCF) and a former missionary who spent 22 years in Berdyansk, southeastern Ukraine, before the war with Russia forced him and his family home.</p><p>Boo's story is one of radical rootedness and repeated uprooting — from a Georgia Tech student who expected a career in business, to a missionary learning Russian in an immersive crash course with an unlikely teacher, to a man returning to America without a credit score and rediscovering his calling right back where it started.</p><p>Together, Jarrod and Boo explore:</p><ul><li>How a mission trip to Juárez, Mexico sparked a life-changing call</li><li>The hard, beautiful years of learning language, culture, and belonging in a foreign land</li><li>What struggling Ukrainian villages taught them about the raw, unadorned gospel</li><li>The grief of exile — and the unexpected renewal that followed</li><li>How God was already at work before the missionaries arrived</li><li>What a generation of Georgia Tech students is teaching <em>him</em> about faith, mission, and fire</li></ul><p>This is a conversation about the courage it takes to follow a calling — and the grace it takes to follow it again.</p><p><em>"I look up to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord." — Psalm 121</em></p><p>#ComplexCreaturesPodcast #MissionaryLife #UkraineMission #RootedAndRenewed #CampusMinistry #GeorgiaTech #GTCCF #FaithAndCalling #ChristianMission #CollegeMinistry #SpiritualFormation #CalledToGo #ChristianPodcast #FaithInAction #HomeComing</p>