I grew up in Clear Lake, a great place for that, but that was a very long time ago. I attended Illinois Institute of Technology in Fire Protection Engineering. While there I met Martha, who was attending Concordia Teachers' College nearby, and we were married in 1961 (thank God, we still are.) We have two wonderful kids - Steve and Jennifer, and they've given us five super grandkids - Christian, Rachel, Hannah, Deven, and Daniela.
Steve is a C-5 pilot in the Air Force reserves, and his wife Sheila is concluding her last year in the Reserves. Guess where they met. Jennifer is a Vet Technologist, and her husband Dave is a creative restoration carpenter. For the past nine years Jen, Dave, Marcy, Chris, Rachel, Hannah, and I share a 300 year-old farm house that required nearly complete restoration. Sound like the Waltons? (It's better !)
Marcy is an outstanding kindergarten school teacher in a great little Christian elementary school in our (otherwise) very New England type town north of Boston. She also faithfully operates a small hobby farm with goats, a mini-horse, and chickens; Jen has sheep, a big horse, and a variety of ducks.
I spent my career as a fire protection engineer with the insurance industry (Des Moines), Ford Motor Company (Norfolk, VA), US GSA (Washington, DC), National Fire Protection Association (Boston), and US Dept of Veterans Affairs the last 20 years north of Boston. From there I retired into a part-time consulting business to help with the cost of my favorite job ever – working with e3 Partners Ministry (www.e3Partners.org) .
E3 Partners takes Americans internationally on short-term mission trips to start new churches through wonderful disciple-making missions. In a week we usually see between 300 and 7,000 people make professions of faith to Jesus Christ, as they hear our testimonies and the Gospel, worship, and study the Bible with our teams. Each team includes an American, an interpreter, and one or two national church members. After we leave, the nationals continue to nurture relationships with the new believers.
Our purpose is to Equip God’s people to Evangelize His world and Establish His church (e3). Our hope is for a time when every person in every nation will be within walking distance of church. Sounds pretty lofty, and it is, because it is God working in the hearts of people in unimaginable ways and changing the lives of those who “Go.”
