I was raised in a Lutheran home.  While I proceeded through the “confirmation” process and became a full member of the Lutheran Church, I never remember hearing the simple plan of salvation and the need to make a decision to receive Christ as my Lord and Savior.  In short, I was lost.  It was not until college that a high school friend told me that there was a God that loved me and wanted to save me. 

Save me from what? An eternity in hell.  Save me to what?  An eternity in heaven and His promise that He would walk with me through this life.  She got my attention by being able to quote the Bible to support her points – I was impressed by this.  Being an engineer, I approached this challenge logically.  I purchased a King James Bible and a book entitled “Religion Can Be Hazardous To Your Health” (now in a landfill).  I weighed the evidence and started attending a church in Blacksburg, VA.  Through the preaching and the power of the Word of God, I was convicted of my sin and received Christ as my Lord and Savior just before Easter in 1981.

It was not until after I had met and married my wife, Mary, that we started to look for a church to attend regularly and raise our children in (ca. 1991).  Without a solid foundation, I had wandered away from God.  Ironically, it was a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses who knocked on our door which started me back toward God.  The Spirit within me which I had ignored for so long said “they are not right”; however, I did not have enough knowledge of God’s word to refute them.  I started looking for answers.  Not long after, I was invited by a colleague to Temple Baptist Church (Chantilly, VA) pastored by John Bonds.  Things started happening in our lives - good things.  Mary got saved as a result of that ministry.  I got my life back on track for the Lord and I was scripturally baptized in a Bible-believing church.  We started serving the Lord at Temple.  When Temple closed in 1999, we found Battlefield Baptist Church and started serving there.  In short, when I got serious with God through soul-winning visitation, God got serious with me.  My interest in studying the Bible increased.  We became very active in Battlefield’s annual Missions Revivals.  Through this and seeing the need of souls in the balance, God started moving us toward a greater commitment for Him. 

In the mean time, God took me to the top of my engineering field.  The work was very interesting, the challenges were great and the pay was very good.  From this vantage point, God showed me that the eternal souls of people were more important in eternity than anything I was doing as an engineer. In short, the desire God placed in me to serve Him was greater than any draw of interesting work and high pay.  In the fall of 2002 we surrendered to full-time service as missionaries at Battlefield’s Missions Revival.  We did not know where He would lead us, we only knew for certain that God had something for us to do with our lives which was greater than us.  We started Bible College training as well as served in mission fields (Belize, Zambia) to learn and to seek God's will for our service.  God burdened my and my wife's heart for Wales after a short visit there.  Since that time, I have had the opportunity to preach there as we met the BBFI missionaries in Wales (Summer 2007).  I was blessed to have one woman come forward for salvation on our first Sunday there.  We are anxiously looking forward to ministering there and reaching the lost in this once great Christian country.

To God be the glory!