I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio going to a Catholic church every Sunday.  I learned some stories from the Bible, but I never heard the message of the gospel.  I simply thought that I would be able to go to heaven because I tried to be a good person, and in my own mind I was better than most of the other kids around me.  I reasoned that if God graded on a curve, I would be okay.  However, when I went to bed, I was fearful at the thought of dying.  

  My mother decided to homeschool my brother and I when I was in the second grade, and I praise the Lord that after trying several different textbooks, we started using the A Beka Book textbooks.  These books incorporated the Bible into each of the subjects, and through them I was exposed to the Bible and to a Christian worldview.  I began reading the Bible and the more I read it, the more I saw that I was a sinner in need of salvation.  I found that when I measured myself against God’s standard of holiness, my life fell far short of what it should be.  I saw that I needed to somehow be saved from my sins, but I did not yet know how I could find the salvation I needed.  While I was in high school, I remember that one church out of all the churches in our neighborhood, the Winton Place Baptist Church, had knocked on our door to try to share the gospel with us.  Of course, we had told them that we were not interested because we were Catholic, but I had kept the tract that they gave us, and I never forgot that there was a church in our neighborhood that had tried to share the gospel with us.  

 After I graduated from high school, I asked my father for permission to visit other churches.  I was looking for a church that would help me understand what the Bible taught about salvation, and the first church I thought of was the Winton Place Baptist Church.  The members there must have been very surprised to have a Catholic teenager come to a Sunday night service with a pen and a notebook who said, “I’m looking for the truth”!  The members there were very friendly to me and graciously spent time answering the many questions I asked.  I told everyone that I was a Christian, but I still was not completely sure of my salvation.  I was talking with my pastor on a Wednesday night about salvation when he asked me a surprising question.  He said to me, “Do you know your address?”  I answered, “Of course!”  He then told me, “You should be just as sure of where you will spend eternity as you are of where you live right now.  Where you live now is temporary, but eternity is forever.”

That night, I was determined to know for sure that I was saved.  I read tracts, I read the Bible, and I prayed; but I still did not have peace because my trust was still in myself and the things that I was doing.  Early in the morning, I read Ephesians 2:8-10 and by God’s grace I saw that I could not be saved by any work that I did.  I saw that salvation is a gift from God, and it is based on faith in what Christ had already done for me, not on any work that I could do.  

I shared with the church that I had been saved, but being the careful person that I was, I did not submit for baptism until I had read the entire Articles of Faith for our church!  I was glad to take part in ministry at our church, and although I had planned to study in college to be a teacher, I changed my major to Pastoral Ministries because I felt that the Lord was calling me to ministry.  I then surrendered to preach and later surrendered to go to the mission field.  I had attended a summer camp on missions where I saw the need for missionaries to go to other parts of the world where there are very few opportunities for people to hear the gospel.  

  I spent six months in Peru training with a missionary on the field, and while I was there, the Lord burdened my heart for the Muslim world.  The more I read about Muslims around the world, the more I saw that they are in the same condition I was in before the Lord saved me.  They are caught up in a false religion that gives them no hope of salvation.  I saw that they needed someone to preach the gospel to them just like I had needed someone to preach the gospel to me.  After taking a vision trip to Turkey, I began deputation and a little over a year and a half later, my wife and I left to live in the mission field of Turkey.  

  My wife and I had many things to adjust to.  We were newlyweds with a new country, a new culture, and a new language to learn.  We spent two years in the capital city of Ankara, Turkey where we attended language school and began witnessing and building relationships.  We then settled in the city of Eskisehir where we worked alongside another missionary family to plant a New Testament church there.  We were able to see several people come to faith in Christ, and we were able to baptize two Turkish believers.   After living in the country of Turkey for almost six years, my family and I felt the Lord leading us to return to the States to plant a church among the growing number of Muslims in our country.  

  We are now working in the Cincinnati area, reaching out to Muslims and others from restrictive countries with little access to the gospel.  We have been following some of the same ministry practices that we used in Turkey, teaching free English classes to be a blessing to the international community and seeking to build relationships with the people we meet and share the gospel with them.  After some of our contacts requested to learn more about the Bible, we started a weekly Bible study which we have been teaching weekly for over 6 years.  We are grateful for the opportunity to minister to people from many different countries where they do not have the opportunity to hear the gospel!