Eric’s Testimony

I did not grow up in a Christian home.  My parents were divorced when I was 10 and my father left the country.  My mother tried taking us to a little Methodist church but I resisted (along with my 2 brothers & 1 sister).  When I got to high school and we moved into another house, the high school I attended was quite small, around 300 students, 10-12th grades.  I was involved in sports and had a friend who ran track with me.  His girlfriend was in my math class.  One of their friends invited them to church where they both accepted Christ into their lives.  As we had a fairly tight friendship, they invited me at one point which I resisted … again.  One day I did go (as a senior in high school) and to my surprise had an entirely different experience than that I had before.  

The preacher spoke from the Bible and over time the pieces of the gospel were put together.  After attending a few times, I felt convicted of sin and went forward to receive Christ and was baptised.  Over the next 2 years I was plagued by serious doubts.  I don’t know if it was a matter of my lack of confidence, understanding more as time went on and thinking (did I need to know that), or something else.  I was never involved in any discipleship or small group Bible Study.  But after 2 years I surrendered to the fact that if I did not get to heaven then it was Jesus’ fault as I had trusted what He said.  That was a turning point for me and I was re-baptised.

During my university time (electronics engineering), I attended the same church (Emmanuel Baptist Church) where I got saved.  I got involved in the bus ministry, visitation  and Sunday School (on occasion) and joined up with a local campus ministry.  My senior year I was president of the campus ministry called “Campus Light”.  Upon graduating, I moved to the NoVA area to take my first job and got involved in, what was at the time, Bethlehem Baptist Church.  I became involved in visitation and bus ministry there as well.  As the church had a deaf ministry I thought it would be something unique to be able to teach the bus children some sign language.  One thing led to another in that sign language seemed to suit me and I became more involved in the church’s deaf ministry as an interpreter.  

Over the next 3 years I felt increasingly despondent in my job, desiring to spend as much time as I could with ministry.  I felt God calling me to full time ministry to work with the deaf.  I left NoVA and my job to attend the graduate school at Baptist Bible College (Springfield, MO).  It was there I met my “to be wife” Lisa.  After graduating with an M.Div., I returned to NoVA.  I took the deaf ministry and set up separate services, etc as a volunteer as the church could not take me on in that role.  My old company took me back on as an engineer.  I did that for 7 years.  As our church was very missions minded, we had foreign missionaries through all the time.  Over time, God started working on our hearts for ministry on foreign soil.  We surrendered in 1991 and were approved as missionaries with the Baptist Bible Fellowship International in 1992.  Since then we have switched organisations to Central Missionary Clearinghouse.  We initially felt called to Croatia.  We were there for about 18 months.  During the time there, I progressed in my language learning.  However, due to Lisa’s hearing loss, she really struggled and sensed God was using that to move us on.  We returned to the USA, seeking God’s direction, knowing it would need to be an English speaking country.  We considered England, prayed and investigated and have now been in England for 18 years.

Lisa’s Testimony

My parents got saved in Texas when I was about ten years old.  During that time as a 10 year old seeing my family get saved I just followed them.  As I grew up I knew I had a void in my life.  But I went to church, served in youth activities, went to Bible College, got married , worked in various ministries and served as a Pastor’s wife to the deaf.  But i still had a void in my life I couldn’t shake.  I kept asking God why and didn’t understand and why I wasn’t feeling blessed. 

In March 1996 an evangelist, Jamie Ragle, came to our church for a revival and he spoke on total surrender.  God was speaking to me all week.  On the last night i knew what I needed to do.  It was then that I fully surrendered my life to the Lord and asked him to fill that void.  It was incredible because that night I knew God was really in my heart and I haven’t looked back.  I also started seeing how blessed I really was.

A few weeks after my salvation of fully surrendering we had a mission conference in our church.  I always enjoyed and felt love for missionaries.  I was starting to feel that God was calling me to surrender to full time mission work.  I think God was waiting for me to get right with Him before He decided to call me to full time mission work.  I prayed and a couple weeks later I told Eric about what I was feeling.  He said he was feeling the same thing.  We prayed together and surrendered in April/May 1996 for full time mission work.  We didn’t know where, but God called us to Croatia.  We went there and spent almost 2 years in Croatia before moving to England in December 2002.  God has blessed our ministry and has used me for what He called me to do.