I was saved in my high school years. Immediately after graduation I joined the military, and a few months later I married my high school sweetheart (who is still my sweetheart and ministry partner forty-seven years later).
While stationed in Germany in 1980-81, we had part in planting a church for US service members. There we met our first missionaries, John & Alma Bettig, who served with Trans World Radio, recording and producing Russian language broadcasts to beam into the Soviet Union. After they spent an afternoon telling us of their twenty years of work in this ministry, we were moved in our hearts with both the responsibility and opportunity to share the Gospel of Christ with the world beyond us.
In 1981, after completing my four-year military tour, we moved to our present home church in Louisville, Kentucky, and became more involved in ministry and missions. Starting in 1991, I was able to take short-term trips to Eastern Europe and Russia to teach in Bible institutes and to preach. In 1999, we began taking yearly trips to Mexico with our church.
When I became pastor of our church in 2001, we were able to focus on missions through increased giving, more mission trips, and sending out our own. In 2003, we sent our son Matt and his family to Papua New Guinea (PNG). He was the first missionary sent from our church who grew up in the church. It meant much to our people.
My wife and I visited PNG in late 2005, and while we were there the Lord directly moved in our hearts that PNG was where we should be. We didn’t see it coming—after all, who follows their son into the ministry? The needs were for someone to learn the unwritten Kamea language with a view to translating the Bible, and for someone with medical experience and gifting to serve the people with a medical clinic. Those were a perfect fit for my wife and me (now empty nesters). I had always enjoyed working with other languages and had a burden for Bible translation; and my wife was a registered nurse with varied experience.
A few months later we resigned our positions and moved to Bowie, Texas, to begin training at BBTI. We are now in our seventeenth year in PNG and use lessons we learned at BBTI almost constantly.
Summer 2024