My name: Jeff Sandstrom

   Status:

From a movie set in Hollywood, former MWAH! artist Jeff Sandstrom has revealed plans to follow his dream beyond Tinseltown – to enroll in a Bible college in preparation for becoming a youth pastor.

Hired by an agency one week after his arrival during the summer of 2005, he has done three movies, a television show, and a commercial. The films include “American Dreamz,” a romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant and Mandy Moore, and “Accepted,” a college comedy from the director of “American Pie.” The TV gig was “The Score,” an MTV dating show with host Ryan Cabrera. Jeff says getting jobs in Hollywood is “who you know, what you look like, and how likable you are.”

Jeff describes the summer as “the experience of a lifetime” and credits the MWAH! troupe as seeing potential in him for entertainment that he had not seen in himself. Jeff was a consistent performer with the troupe for nearly three years, beginning at the age of 14 in August 1999 until June 2002. He reunited with the troupe for trips to Quincy and the Quad Cities in 2003. He says the reason he is forsaking the klieg lights and surfing is he still loves kids and always feels satisfied in giving back to students. His final advice is “remember always to put others before yourself because once it starts to become all about yourself, you lose focus of why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first place.”

Jeff has enrolled at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri, for a degree in Pastoral Studies. He adds “my faith is the one thing that really guides me and probably is the reason I’ve gotten as far as I have.”

An academic goal of the Missouri college, as stated in its website, is to “produce men and women who are both saints and scholars.” Its faculty “will take you from where you are to where God wants you to be. It’s not how you start. It’s how you finish.”