Pastor's $20 Beard

During our No Shave November event, many Elysia members wanted to see Pastor Younger participate. No one had EVER seen him with more than a day’s worth of scruff, not even his own daughter! The only person who had seen Pastor go without shaving for more than a day was his wife, and this was at max 3 days.

No matter how many times we asked, Pastor continuously declined to participate. Besides the fact that Federal Way Mission is a very conservative church, where pastors are expected to be clean shaven, Pastor Younger just hates having facial hair. Being a bit of a clean freak, Pastor worries that his beard will harbor grime and doesn’t like how it feels “itchy”.

Although it seemed that there was no hope to see Pastor with a scruffy face, our sister Esther desperately pleaded with pastor. She continued to ask Pastor even after No Shave November ended and pledged to pay $20 for 5 days, which is quadruple the normal pledge rate. After weeks of begging, Pastor finally agreed to not shave for 5 days. When I asked Pastor what changed his mind, he said that he simply wanted to make Esther’s day.

In the end, Pastor didn’t shave for only 4 days but Esther was still very happy and gave $20 to Project Compassion. And of course Pastor was very happy that he was able to shave again. Especially since his wife would tease him, saying that there is lice in his beard whenever he complained about it being itchy.

Here is a snapchat video that Esther took of Pastor on his final day of not shaving.