One of the stores on main street in Richand, KS. Probably in the '20s or '30s. It didn't look too much different in the '50s when I was a kid on the farm just four miles west.

Who am I? Born in 1944 into a northeast Kansas farm family near Richland. Went to small one room Howard School down the road a mile. Most of life circulated around family, church, school and the farm. My parents were committed followers of Jesus and passed that on to us five kids. As a kid of about seven I realized that I was a sinner and needed a savior and accepted that Jesus' death and resurrection was for me and committed to follow him. Through the influence of family and church I read and memorized many Bible verses and was exposed to "world missions" by the many missionaries who came to our church - which turned out to be my own career. 

My maternal grandfather was the maintenance man for the local hand-crank phone system in our area and gave me old phone stuff which contributed to my life-long interest in electricity, electronics and particularly communications. Influenced by a cousin, a teacher in high school and a boys club leader in our church who was a ham and worked for the FAA, I got my ham license when I was a freshman in high school in 1958 and have enjoyed ham radio since. 

I attended John Brown University, a small Christian college in northwest Arkansas since it was both Christian and offered engineering, my two main interests in life. I married Sharon, my childhood sweetheart in 1965. We have three married children and nine grandchildren and one great granddaughter. We currently live in Wisconsin near our children and grandchildren.

We lived in Ghana in West Africa from 1972-1974. My assignment with there Wycliffe Bible Translators was to set up HF radio communications for the ten Bible language/translation teams then working across the northern part of the country and essentially isolated with not-so-good roads and no telephone service. During those years I held one of the only two then-active ham licenses in the country. The other was held by a translator working in one of the remote villages. The balance of my 40+ years serving with Wycliffe has mostly been in administrative and leadership roles based here in the US.

My interests: God, Family, ham radio/electronics/communications, RC planes and recently backpacking and canoeing, along with lots of other stuff.

My Work: Retired in 2018. Though I have an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering my wife and I spent 48 of our 53 married years serving with Wycliffe Bible Translators in a number of capacities and locations, mostly non-technical. For the past five years, until retirement a few weeks ago, I serve voluntarily as Executive Director of Aramaic Bible Translation a small organization committed to translating the Bible into five of the current Aramaic languages descended from ancient Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus and by most people in that region of the world at the time.

Our Church

Since moving to Burlington, WI in 2007 we have attended Faith Chapel where our son is pastor.