Karen and I are both country kids. I grew up in the hills, southwest of Columbus, Indiana, while Karen grew up on a farm  northwest of Terre Haute.

After graduating from Columbus North High School in 1976, I studied engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana. Karen and I met during our freshman year, while she was studying at St. Mary of the Woods College - also in the Terre Haute area.

While at Rose-Hulman, I began partying and drinking more and more, which almost ended my college career. However, Karen encouraged me to stay in school and helped me make a turn-around in my studies and grades.

We graduated in 1980, with my degree in mechanical engineering and Karen’s in history and secondary education. We married in August of that same year and returned to my hometown of Columbus where I took a job as an engineer in a small, but growing manufacturing company. Karen soon found a job working for a bank and later for a CPA.

In the spring of 1981, I joined a country band, playing guitar and singing lead vocals. Although I kept my engineering job, I played in bars and clubs almost every weekend for over three years. This lifestyle led to a serious drinking problem and almost ruined our marriage. We were in the divorce lawyer’s office by the spring of 1982. Once again, Karen stood by me and we decided to give our marriage another chance, but by the summer of 1984, I was again ready to quit my marriage and my job and was considering pursuing a career in music.

However, the Lord intervened in my life through a Christian friend who had talked with me for over five years about my need for Christ. Although I had never listened to him before, it was in the summer of 1984 that we ended up in a conversation that ultimately the Lord used to get my attention. My friend had given me a lot to think about, and the Lord was at work in my heart. Within a few days, I came to faith in Christ.

That decision changed my life forever. The Lord restored our marriage, took the alcohol out of my life and within two months, Karen had trusted Christ for her salvation as well. We soon began attending Berean Bible Church, a great church with excellent preaching of The Word, a strong emphasis on evangelism and a deep passion for missions. Before long, the Lord began directing us toward full-time Christian service.

During a missions conference at our new home church, the Lord seemed to put a burden on my heart to be a missionary - and I began praying that the Lord would send someone that I could talk to about this desire. He answered that prayer within just a few months. A young married couple, students at the Word of Life Bible Institute in Schroon Lake, New York, came to our church  to do an internship.

Through the influence of that couple, we decided that we should  get some formal Bible training at the WOL Bible Institute, as well. We enrolled in 1985, one year after we were saved, and it was an incredible year. The Lord used this year of studying His Word, plus some great teachers and a number of dear friends, to help us make decisions concerning our next step toward full-time ministry and the mission field.

So, the next year, in 1986, it was on to Dallas Theological Seminary to begin work on a Th.M. degree. In January of 1988, we returned to Schroon Lake to serve an internship with Word of Life in which I held the position of Dean of Men at the Bible Institute. Our son, Chris, was born in August of that year.

While serving in the Bible Institute, we fell in love with both Word of Life and  especially the Bible Institute ministry. Our plans changed as this one-year internship turned into almost three years of ministry. The Lord used this time to provide further direction for the future. We began thinking that we would really like to found and direct a Bible Institute in a country where there was virtually no solid biblical training.

In the fall of 1989, the Lord used yet another missions conference in our local church to touch our hearts and get us moving toward the mission field once again. We approached the leadership of Word of Life with our hopes and dreams.  They encouraged us to consider joining the team that was preparing to begin a Word of Life ministry in the country of Hungary. Two weeks after we had made the decision to go to Eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall fell - and the rest, as they say, is history.

We were accepted as full-time missionaries with Word of Life in June of 1990. Returning to DTS in the fall of 1990, I switched to the Master of Arts in Biblical Studies program and graduated with that degree in 1991.

Then it was back to our hometown of Columbus, Indiana to begin working on raising the prayer and financial support we needed to serve as missionaries with Word of Life. It was while we were on deputation in January, 1992 that our daughter, Becky, was born.

We arrived in Hungary on December 30, 1992 - with the goal of opening the Word of Life Hungary Bible School in 1994. Looking back, it is amazing to see how the Lord took me through language school, helped us assemble a basic staff, write the curriculum in two languages and actually open the school according to schedule.

We are in our 12th academic year and have had students from 25 different countries attend our two-year program. During this time the Lord has grown our staff into one of the strongest teams any school could have. At the same time, we have been able to put together a guest lecture program with some of the finest and most well-known Bible teachers of this generation. Our credits are now accepted by the same schools that accept credits from the Word of Life schools in the United States, which is a tremendous blessing for those seeking to further their education. The majority of our graduates are now serving the Lord in their home countries or continuing their education to prepare for full-time ministry.

In recent years, the Lord has allowed my teaching ministry to expand beyond my ministry in Hungary, as I have had the opportunity to teach in schools in the United States, Canada, Germany, Ukraine, India and the Philippines.

On May 25, 2004, I was appointed as the Associate Director for the Word of Life Hungary ministry, of which I am also a board member. I also continue my responsibilities as the director of the Bible School.

Karen has had a fruitful and wide-ranging ministry over the last 13 years that we have been in Hungary. She has taught English, both in our Bible School and in the public school in our village of Tóalmás. She has hosted hundreds of guests - including guest teachers and their wives, work teams, English language teams - and all of the students from each year of the Bible School.

Our children, Chris and Becky,  have attended Hungarian public schools from the very beginning and are equally fluent in English and Hungarian. Chris is a high school junior majoring in math, and Becky is in the 8th grade, attending the public school in our village. From the time that they were 7 or 8 years old, both kids have spent a lot of time in summer camp helping in various ways - including translating for English language teachers in camp. However, this past summer they were able to serve as full-fledged helpers. For six weeks of camp, Chris worked in the kitchen and dining hall. Becky worked all seven weeks of camp, serving as a translator in the Language Camps.

And that is our story . . .