HELLO FROM THE IRWINS!

We are Ryan and Dana, along with our three daughters Anna, Naomi and Abby. 

But before we get ahead of ourselves, we do want to address the all important St. Louis question:

Yes, both Dana and I were born and raised in St. Louis.  And which high schools did we attend?  I’m so glad you asked!  Dana is a graduate from Nerinx High School and I graduated from Kirkwood.  

Dana and I met when she was 14 and we married at 19.  Add in three beautiful daughters, a great dane named Cephas and most recently a cat named Blind Daddy and you have one very full and busy household!  As a family, we love playing board games and watching movies…if you’re not a Marvel fan you just might not want to mention that around our crew.  We also love taking walks, we tend to be rather chatty, and we enjoy eating foreign foods and trying out new restaurants.  In fact, the more exotic, the better!  For those of you who know all about the Enneagram, we are a family of great diversity, as no two of us are the same number.

What brought us to Dutchtown?  Dana and I didn’t know it was actually called Dutchtown when we first moved here 17 years ago.  We were drawn to living in the city and being surrounded by such beautiful diversity.  Did you know that more than 115 different languages are spoken within a half mile of our home?  

While our original dream was to live overseas as missionaries, God had other plans in store.  And with the arrival of several children on our doorstep each day, Dutchtown Outreach quietly began.