About

Welcome to AbeOlson.com, a resting place for some of my various things and thoughts.

Life Bio

Born in 1984 in the small town of Hastings, Minnesota, I grew up biking all over town, hiking around the Vermilion Falls, eating 25 ¢ milkshakes from the Polka Dot dairy, and spending time with my then growing number of siblings (six total in the end).

I moved to Burnsville, MN in the summer of 1998. The year before that I started going to Trinity School at River Ridge, where I attended through high school. I wrestled and played soccer while in high school (145 and left/right fullback respectively). Graduating in 2003, I decided to follow God's call to go to school out at the University of Portland. That summer, I also decided to join a Christian community called the People of Praise.

In the next four years of life, I tore my ACL, studied Physics, learned to play guitar (poorly), learned to pray regularly, joined the Company of the People of Praise, did physics research, was involved in the life of the Portland branch, went to Budapest, and became more and more involved in the citybuilding work of the People of Praise. After graduating in May of 2007, I joined the Missionary Company and moved to Indianapolis to do street evangelism, preaching, and other types of mission work. I got to live with some great brothers and sisters in the Lord there. I also became much better friends with the Lord during that time, and learned a lot about living on faith and seeing what God can do.

While in the Missionary Company, I discerned a call to pursue a PhD in Physics and started that in August 2008 at Purdue University. 6 years were spent tuning lasers, building circuits, programming code, and writing papers. I defended my PhD on Jan. 30th, 2015.

During the last part of my PhD, I got married to a wonderful woman named Trish in August of 2014! We've lived on the near Southside of Indianapolis since that time, and we partake in the regular mission and commmunity life of the People of Praise in the neighborhood. Over those years, our family has grown with the arrival of daughters in 2015, 2017 and 2019.

Since 2006, all the above has been enabled by generous grants of great coffee from True Stone Coffee Roasters.