Today, at 22, and one of the most promising new artists in contemporary Christian music, with his debut album Here With Me (Slanted Records) Nate is speaking out as a voice of support for November’s National Adoption Awareness Month.

“I’m thankful to God and to a biological mother that I never knew who chose the option of life for me,” he noted in a recent interview. “I am a planned mistake, a blessed gift. Growing up with wonderful adopted parents and seven amazing brothers and sisters of different nationalities—I have grown up to appreciate life and its’ fullness.”

Nate will be back home in Phoenix on November 9th to perform for the 25th anniversary of the Christian Family Care Agency—the locally based agency that handled his own personal adoption in 1985. More than 800 guests and media are expected to be on hand for his performance—and to hear his personal passion for the music and ministry course his life has taken.

He will be performing one of the tracks from his debut album—the song "Your Own" that Nate and his older brother Dan wrote for their own individual birth mothers. “It’s a song thanking them for their love and strength to be willing to give us up and let us go,” says Nate. “They trusted we would have better lives and gave us a second chance at life.”

Because of his own personal life journey, Nate has also chosen to be a voice of support within the music industry for the now global work of Mercy Ministries, a unique ministry that offers aid to young women struggling with unplanned pregnancies, as well as a broad range of destructive life patterns, from eating disorders to self-harm and addictions. A portion of the sale of his Here With Me album is channeled to the work of Mercy.

Nate is hoping November will be a month of special awareness to the value of Christian adoption. “I say ‘thank you’ to all mothers and fathers—to those that are willing to ‘choose life’ and give us up to adoption, and to those that are willing to take us in." He adds: "I am here because my mother chose life—God gave me a second chance—and I am proud to say ‘I am adopted!”

To learn more about the work of Mercy Ministries: www.mercyministries.org