Alexis (Ali) Kenny

alexis C. kenny

A BIOGRAPHY

My name is Ali Kenny. I was born and raised in the beautiful “Big Sky Country” of Montana. Trading snow for sun, I attended the University of San Diego (USD). I was an English major (reading books on the beach), and minored in both Spanish and Leadership Studies. I was lucky enough to have met my future husband, Patrick Kenny, as a college student. Post graduation, I lived in Colorado while Pat attended the University of Denver. Soon after his proposal atop a mountain in Boulder, I moved to Chicago to begin my studies at Catholic Theological Union (CTU) as a pastoral MA candidate for Intercultural Ministry.

After my first year of graduate school, CTU granted me a sabbatical so I could pursue a calling I felt to international volunteerism. My then-fiancé so generously allowed himself to be coerced into committing to work at Amigos de Jesús (ADJ) – a home for children in rural Honduras. In the month of June, Pat graduated with an MA in Sport and Performance Psychology, and the two of us ended our long-distance engagement with a wedding near Glacier National Park. Less than two weeks after

saying “I do,” Pat and I landed in San Pedro Sula - unsure of what the next 13 months would throw our way.

We served as Padrinos - the primary caretakers - of specific groups of children at ADJ. Pat worked with 33 boys, ages 5-13, while I spent my days bucket showering, braiding hair, and folding the laundry of 16, similarly-aged girls. One year filled with memories of loving 49 kids later, Pat and I flew to the Atlanta airport only to have to say goodbye shortly after our arrival. He continued on to Virginia to start his doctorate degree in psychology at James Madison University (JMU), while I returned to Chicago to finish my master’s. In January 2015, Pat and I finally began our lives as a “normal” married couple. I moved to Harrisonburg after completing my coursework, and wrote my thesis ("Married in Mission"). It was during this time that I applied and was accepted into the doctoral program at JMU in which Pat is a student. So it looks like I will be a psychologist when I grow up.