At age 13, I was reading the James Bond book series, and my mom slipped in a book called God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew. He is a Dutchman who has given his life to making sure the Gospel goes to places where the government doesn’t want it. The book is about his time smuggling Bibles in behind the Iron Curtain (former Soviet Union). To me, he was James Bond for God.

When I was 15 years old, I went on my first short term mission trip. It was an exhilarating experience (even though I came back sick and close to being hospitalized). I went on a trip every summer during high school. It was on these trips that God called my heart to missions.

After marrying my wife, Krista, who is a missionary kid herself, we would ask ourselves every six months if God was calling us to full time missions. The answer was no. Life moved on, and God took me into the world of business in the IT industry getting to work with the computers that I enjoyed messing around with as a teen. He also had us get involved with a couple of church plants where I would work with the youth department. This also gave me the opportunity to continue going on short term mission trips.

In the summer of 2004, through a series of events, my wife and I were asking ourselves again if God was calling us to full time cross-cultural missions. We started to search the Internet and quickly found eDOT. A month later we flew to Germany to see if this really was God’s calling on our lives. It was there in a meeting where I was consulting on a technical project that I saw how God had used my whole life in preparation for that meeting. Not just for eDOT, but for that meeting. Now understand, my degree is in physics and I’ve worked as a retail clerk, armed security officer, horse wrangler, waiter, cook, buyer, business systems analyst, project manager, youth ministry director and programmer. That’s a lot of different experiences to put into one meeting!

A while back, when working in the banking industry, I was asked where I saw myself in the future. I answered that I would be leading a technology development team that would be making things that bettered the world. I’m getting to live that dream.

Fun Fact: Have been to 27 different countries (most of them more than once & I don’t count if I didn’t leave the airport).