Abbi and Abbey: From Strangers to Roommates to Friends
Posted on: June 4, 2026
From the day Abbi Steele and Abbey Steen found out they were roommates, they instantly became friends.
Steele and Steen first met each other during New Student Connect in May 2025 at the campus store’s pop-up shop in front of Todd Gathering Place.
Prior to the orientation, Steele found out that Steen was her roommate when she was checking in and sent a message to her sister saying her roommate was also named Abbey.
“I sent a message to my sister and said ‘My roommate’s name is Abbey Steen, like that’s so crazy!’ My sister looked her up on Facebook and sent me a picture and was like ‘This is what she looks like, go find her’ so right after that I was walking around and that’s when I saw her at the shop and I was like ‘Oh my gosh that’s literally her,’” said Steele, a freshman psychology major at NGU.
“Abbi happened to come through and was like ‘Are you my roommate? and I’m like ‘Is your name Abbey?’ and she was like ‘Yeah!’ and after that we started talking and stopped shopping actually,” said Steen, a freshman health science major concentrating in exercise and minoring in mathematics at NGU.
“I walked up and started talking, and the rest is history,” said Steele.
Steen and Steele have learned a lot about each other during their freshman year and plan to remain roommates next school year.
While they were both involved in different campus life activities throughout the week, one of their favorite traditions they started was playing Bananagrams on a regular basis and debrief in their room at the end of the day.
“We have our own little lives and then we get to come and discuss them with each other so that’s a very rewarding part of it,” said Steele.
“I think that’s why we room so good together,” said Steen, “We’re not together constantly, every single day. Then, if something happens during the day, you don’t go back to the room and argue about it.”
Both Steele and Steen have both seen their faith grow significantly during their first year at NGU.
“I feel like I’ve really been challenged to just seek Jesus in every aspect of my life, which has definitely been hard to no compartmentalize things,” said Steele. “But instead of trying to process stuff on my own, or go through things, my prayer life has grown a lot because I’ve been taking things to Jesus, and that been so great.”
“I think this semester I’ve grown a lot closer to God through prayer and especially now that I found a church that I’m happy about and it’s good,” said Steen.
For incoming freshman looking to attend NGU, Steele and Steen offered practical advice. Steen encourages students to room with someone in their age group.
“If you’re worried about having a new roommate that you’ve never met, do it,” said Steen. “If you know someone that’s already here that’s like an upperclassman, you might want to room with them but also adventure out and try to get a roommate that’s going to be in your age group. If you go up in upperclassman dorms, you’re not going to know the people that are your age.”
Steele’s advice to incoming freshman is to listen to God’s still small voice and follow his leading.
“Go where the Lord leads. I originally was not going to come here, but I just could not get away from him saying this is where you need to be so I followed that and since I’ve been here it’s been so cool to look back and see how he’s been ordering my steps the whole way. And this is right where he wanted me,” said Steele.
