CALLED TO SERVE HIS COUNTRY, FAMILY, FARM AND THE LORD

By Bob Fitch

Evan Wintersteen was a nuclear missile operator in the U.S. Air Force and he was deployed to Afghanistan as a member of the Air National Guard.

“Afghanistan was the not-scary part,” Evan said. What really took courage was asking out his future bride. The Air Force trained him to make decisions under stress, but nuclear missiles are apparently not as intimidating as a beautiful woman. “It was no small thing when you ask a lady like Ivory out. I was playing mind games in my head, I was saying, ‘Yeah, man, you should ask her out. No, no, she'd never date a guy like you. She’s too good for you …’”

When he finally asked Ivory Niewenhuis Ries out, it was the day before he was flying to Covid quarantine en route to deployment in Afghanistan.

So their first official date was delayed four months while he performed intelligence analysis in a theatre of battle. “If I never do anything else that cool in the Air Guard again, I'm okay with that because I was doing the job in a combat zone and, yep, we made a difference. We did good work,” said the graduate of South Dakota State University.

During the deployment, technology provided a means for Ivory and Evan to regularly communicate. “We got to know each other without the pressure of actually having to date right away. It was a fun four months,” Evan said. When he returned, they dated for several months before he asked her parents, Dennis and Jackie

While Evan had considered a longterm career in the Air Force, he felt called to return to farm with his parents, Ken and Lynn Wintersteen, of Olivet. “Dad was very supportive with my plans to come home and start farming while simultaneously serving in the Air Guard. It’s a good deal. I get to do a job I love for 28-29 days a month, and then I get to go put on the uniform and do something else cool on a weekend once in a while.” things like the bottle calves and just hanging out on the farm. It's a little bit different now because I have to pay attention to how farming actually works,” she said. Her parents have since moved strictly to being corn and soybean growers. After graduating with a degree in communications from Dordt University in Sioux Center, she lived in Colorado. She ended up shifting away from her college major and became a dental assistant instead.

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