Harrison Beane

Tell us a little about your background: Was baptized as a newborn by Reverend Snow at SUMC. Lived overseas half the time growing up, namely in Athens, Greece as a newborn, part of elementary school in London, England and the end of middle school and beginning of high school in Paris, France. Graduated from Loudoun County High School (class of 2014) and then the Virginia Military Institute (class of 2018). Now work for the U.S. State Department and also Co-Director of Youth Ministries here at SUMC.

What do you do in your free time? Now that I am an old man I am not as much into video games as I used to be, but still play every now and then (and am always willing and able to humble some of our youth in some FIFA soccer on the xbox). Spend much of my free time reading, a mixture of both fiction (sci-fi., and thriller mostly) and non-fiction (msotly current events and international relations books). Big movie buff, and will watch anything from goofy/campy B-movies to arthouse and international films. Pretty much anything entertaining! Very excited for the Academy Awards soon. Also love to fish, although it can definitely be harder up here in Northern VA. And a very big fan of the show Survivor. We used to watch it as a family when we lived overseas, and I love the social strategy and the mental chess moves. Very excited for season 44 starting this week, and was extremely excited to run our own game of Survivor for the youth group a couple months ago! (congrats to Alex G. as our first SUMC Sole Survivor as the winner of Survivor Exodus)

What are you most proud of? I don’t know if I am personally proud of a lot. Most of anything I’ve done that can be considered an “accomplishment” has really come from me being fortunate enough to have the blessings and opportunities I’ve had, so for those I am more grateful than anything else. I am extremely proud of my family. We have gone through some rough times, but it has only made us closer and my mother and sister are two of the best people I know (ok, ok, the two best). I am also very proud of our youth group and our Sterling UMC family as a whole. While we have also gone through tough times, and it may look very different than it does in a lot of our fond memories of years past, it is always amazing to see the central group of folks who are dedicated to this church and our surrounding community. On the youth side, we do really have some of the best kids around, and it has been really cool to see some of them grow up for years within this community. Whether we have twenty youth or five youth showup on any given Sunday night, I always leave feeling a sense of gratitude for the group and excited to see how they will grow and what will come down the road for the group (but don’t tell any of them I said that…).

Three words to describe myself:

“Thankful”, “Humble”, “Handsome”, “Blessed” and “Bad at Math.”