My Story

Many of your already know my story. It has a great beginning; a rebellious and wasteful middle; and, I trust, will have at least a bittersweet and fruitful ending.

I was raised in a devout Christian family and accepted Christ as my own Savior at 12. I matured spiritually as a teenager through Bible study and church involvement, eventually becoming the leader of our youth group.

In my sophomore or junior year in high school, my uncle and aunt gave me a book about Nate Saint, one of the missionaries martyred in Latin America while attempting to bring the gospel to a savage tribe. (The movie End of the Spear was based on that story.) The book was instrumental in my sensing God’s call on my life to be a missionary.

At the time I believed He wanted me to be a missionary pilot, so I began preparing for that role. I applied to, and was accepted in the “pre-aviation” program at Moody Bible Institute -- at the time, one of the two best schools in the US for bush pilot training. After two years of Bible courses and general education, I failed the mechanical aptitude exam and was cut from the program. (Who wants an airplane mechanic that has “spare parts” at the end of a repair job?!)

I took that failure pretty hard, but in retrospect, God had been preparing me for the next phase too. He placed me with an MBI roommate who was an avid photographer and I developed a keen interest in photography, devouring books on the subject and taking as many pictures as I could afford on a student’s budget. I returned to California and targeted one of the best journal-ism schools in the state.

I went on to earn degrees in both journalism and photography and served in various editorial roles for college and military publications. Sadly, I “spit in God’s face” during my later college years choosing which of God's commands I would follow and wasted most of the next 20 years rebelling against God and His claims on my life.

Finally, after marriage and the birth of our first child, I rededicated my life to Christ in 1984. God had used a series of events to bring me back to Himself:

All of my nieces are very special to me, but it was with the birth of my first niece, Sarah, that God taught me how to love again.
The birth of our firstborn, Erinn, opened my eyes to the spiritual responsibilities I was shirking as a father.
The death of my much-loved, Godly Grandmother and the subsequent family get together was the final straw God used to break my will and my pride.

After a year or two of regrowth, I once again sensed God calling me into full-time missions or ministry in some sort of communications-related support role and made a couple attempts to pursue full time Christian service. However, I had taken some wrong paths and made some commitments which created huge obstacles to answering God’s call on my life.

I had also bought into Satan's (the accuser) decades-long accusation: "You're not good enough. Your actions aren't good enough. Your efforts aren't hard enough. Your achievements aren't great enough. Your income isn't high enough..."

God used a progression of Godly friends, small groups, sermons, Bible studies, and books, to finally get through to me — first my head, then increasingly to my heart — that while Satan was partially correct, God chooses to use the foolish to shame the wise ... the weak to shame the strong ... the lowly ... the despised so that no one may boast (I Cor. 1:27-29) provided my heart is right with Him. That is why a couple songs by the group Casting Crowns speak so powerfully to me: "Who Am I?" and "The Voice of Truth."

Since I was a media producer at the time of my rededication, my first ministry activities were elaborate multi-media musicals at our church, First Baptist Church of Los Altos. Subsequent ministries include Sunday school teacher, disaster relief training and service, photography and media production, and of course missions committee member.

I first heard of the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) in 2004, when a photographer friend at the San Francisco Chronicle suggested I contact ABWE. Since then I’ve spent nearly three weeks training in both Texas and at their headquarters outside Harrisburg, PA to serve as one of their volunteer photojournalists who support approximately 1,300 missionaries in 73 countries around the world. (As you may recall, my college training was for a career in photojournalism.) This small group of photojournalists creates still and moving images for use by ABWE and their missionaries for a wide range of mission-related purposes such as publications ranging from newsletters to magazines, slide shows, multi-media and video presentations. To learn more about ABWE, ask me or visit their web site: www.abwe.org

My Story

Links