I was born into a pastor’s home, where I heard the Word of God taught and saw it put into practice from the earliest days of my life.  I came to know Christ as Savior at my mother’s knee and at an early age surrendered my life to Christ to do whatever He wanted me to do.  I spent most of my life through high school in the state of Illinois.  After high school graduation, I went to Pillsbury Baptist Bible College for one year, where I met my wife, Jean, for the first time.  Jean grew up on a farm in central Michigan, where her grandfather took her to church.  She was saved through the faithful witness of a junior church worker.  She surrendered her life for Christian service at a church snow camp.  Both Jean and I transfered to Maranatha Baptist Bible College in 1968, the year the school began.  I received my seminary training at San Francisco Baptist Seminary and Maranatha, then went on to receive a doctorate in New Testament from Bob Jones University in 1978.

After graduation, I taught for twelve years at San Francisco Baptist Seminary, also serving as assistant pastor at Manor Baptist Church of San Leandro, California, and then Calvary Baptist Church of Alameda.  When the school closed its doors in May, 1991, no new teaching opportunities opened up; so I continued ministering in Alameda and took a job in the business world to put food on the table.

I had always believed that God would put us on the mission field someday.  I told Jean that I wanted to wait until at least six of our seven children finished college and I wanted to go to a field where I did not have to learn a new language so that we could begin to minister right away.  God was not impressed with my ideas.  Our oldest daughter, Abi, went to Hungary as a short term missionary to help Jim and Valerie Knies in 1996.  When we came for a visit in 1997, Jim asked me to teach a Bible conference for the church and to consider staying permanently.  After much prayer, we applied to Baptist World Mission and were accepted in April of 1997.  Within two years, we had completed deputation and were on the field.

Our work is to train national leadership to plant new churches.  The Knies family had established the Bible Baptist Church of Pecs, Hungary, in 1995.  We help in every phase of the work, including children’s work, Sunday School, junior church, youth work, music and preaching.  Five Hungarian men have answered the call to preach.  The church has sent one of them, Gedeon Olah, to the city of Nagykanizsa to plant the Lighthouse Baptist Church.  Bela Horvath is now the pastor of the mother church in Pecs.  The ministry of training continues for these two as well as others, who learn and serve at the same time.  We are available to encourage and aid them as they expand their outreach.

When we arrived in Hungary, we made the tenth independent Baptist missionary family engaged in church planting.  Since then, five families have left and only one new family has come to take their places.  We are praying that God will use us to help launch a great church planting movement with Hungarians reaching their own people for Christ.