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BIOGRAPHICAL HIGHLIGHTS.

Jesse Leigh Brackstone was born at 5:15 a.m. on Tuesday, January 17th, 1956, at Orchard Park Nursing Home in Giffnock, Dunbartonshire, in Scotland.  The only daughter of a British Air Force paratrooper, Jesse spent much of her formative years traveling with her family in Europe where she began school in Scharfoldendorf in Germany, on a British Air Force base, at the age of four.

The family returned to Scotland in 1961 after spending two-and-a-half years in Germany, with briefer stays in Holland, France, Wales, and England.  Jesse’s family hails from Aberdeen and the area around her beloved Cairngorm Mountains, but she attended Thornwood Primary School in Glasgow, Elgin Street Primary School in Clydebank, and Clydebank High School, from which she graduated at age fifteen with a Grade Twelve equivalent.  She attended Pirniehall Music School, as first violinist, for a semester every year during her High School days, appeared in several musical and theatrical productions, and was editor of the school’s magazine, representing first through third-year students. 

At age eleven, Jesse won the coveted Brooke Bond Award for creative writing in Scotland (the British equivalent of The National Book Award in the U.S.) and hasn’t stopped writing since - books, poetry, essays, and songs, and standalone musical compositions.  For the past four decades, her primary instrument has been a classical guitar, but she also plays the violin, cello, mandolin, piano, and synthesizer, and has an ongoing love affair with percussion instruments.      

Higher education earned her expertise in Chinese, Ayurvedic, and Western Medicine, and a diploma in naturopathy, and she later graduated from the New York Institute of Photography with a Merit Award for photographic excellence, after which she subsequently won awards from various writing and photographic publications.  Jesse maintains that education is ongoing, saying, ‘The lessons that  we learn from daily life notwithstanding, Brian and I are nearly always engaged in a course of study in a field that’s of interest to us.  We’re perpetually involved with environmental issues, I think at this point in the ruination of the planet, y’kind of have to be.  That aside, at the moment we’re enjoying learning about the cosmos via a series of post-grad courses in astronomy, and for a long time now, we’ve been delving into the mysteries of the human psyche by studying behavioral science and the mind-brain-body connection, or put simply, what makes us all tick.  We both love to learn and it’s fun exploring life’s wonders and mysteries together.  People often ask me what I do when I’m bored, but I have no answer to give them because I’ve never been bored in my life.  With all that God has given us to marvel at and wonder about, we’d need many more lifetimes than we’re blessed with to even have a shot at learning all we’d like to know.  My reading, or these days, my listening list alone has reached the point where I couldn’t complete it if God were  to grant me a full 120-year lifespan, so boredom isn’t a blip on my radar.’

Jesse began work in the missionary field at age eighteen in Canada and that calling has taken her ‘Not quite around the world, but... almost.’  She has used her writing and musical gifts to further spread the Word, and now, with her husband, Brian, she pilots a worldwide orphan ministry.  Professionally, she has worked with such notables as John Denver, Liona Boyd, Yehudi Menuhin, Iain King, Mick Ronson, Tracy Wickland, Richard Fortin, and Gord Sheard, to name a few.

Family:  mother (deceased) was Audrey Grieve, an executive secretary for a chartered accounting firm.  A gifted ballet dancer in her youth, she loved all the arts, but music and dancing in particular.

Father (deceased) was Robert (Bob) Johnstone-Moffat.

Stepfather is John Grieve, whom Audrey married in 1963, when Jesse was seven.

Siblings:  two brothers - Michael Robert Moffat, born in 1959, and Laurence John Grieve, born in 1966.

Jesse is married to Brian Keith Brackstone (missionary, singer/songwriter/musician, and record producer) and they have four (living) children, Elizabeth-Anne (Beth) - 34; Laura Catherine - 32; Jordan William - 29; and Sarah Kathleen - 23.  Daniel, born in 1977, has gone on Home to The LORD early, as have three sweet babies who didn’t quite make it to term.   

Jesse and Brian have three grandchildren - Gavin Liam, age 8; Myah Brooklynn, age 5; and Stephen John, age 3.

Jesse, due to a truck accident in December 2002, is confined to a wheelchair and struggles with multiple skeletal injuries and several chronic disorders including Chronic Endogenous Generational Panic Disorder (not to be confused with ‘normal’ panic attacks), which she’s had since birth, Hashimoto’s disease, Diabetes mellitus type 2, and a rare form of maculopathy which has left her legally blind. 

Highly productive creatively, Jesse holds to a positive philosophy and takes a proactive approach towards bodily weaknesses, maintaining that ‘We all wear out eventually, but I’d rather wear out than rust out any day.  I’ll admit that it’s challenging working with disabilities, but if God needed me to be healthier, I would be since ‘With God all things are possible.’’

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