I surrendered to preach in 1960, when I was 13, and at the age of 16, I felt the call of God to plant churches in Brazil. In 1966, I was 19 and Abbie was 18 when we got married. I graduated from John Brown University in 1968 with a degree in Biblical Studies, and in 1972 God opened the door for us to move to Brazil. When we went to the mission field, we had two children, Rachel and Rick, and our son Jeff was born in Brazil in 1973. In 1975 God called us to leave Brazil and plant a church on Madeira Island, Portugal. Our daughter Joy was born there in 1980.  The podcast Give Me This Mountain tells the story of our 45 years of mission work in Brazil and Portugal, where we worked with our own hands to supplement the voluntary and variable offerings of local churches and individuals. In 2000, when all our supporting churches stopped sending offerings to us because they didn't agree with a doctrinal position I took based on my study of the Bible, God provided more abundantly. I was unexpectedly chosen to serve as the US Consular Agent for Madeira Island from 2001-2013. God called us to return to the US in 2016, and on the 40th anniversary of our arrival on the island, we ordained a Portuguese brother to be the pastor of the Funchal Baptist Church, which we planted in Madeira. The church is thriving and carries on the work of the gospel in Portuguese and English.

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Not only am I a student of the Bible, I am also a student of languages, a linguist with 30 years of freelance translator experience in English and Portuguese. With this "gift of tongues" God has given me, I have learned to read and speak in nearly a dozen languages. The latest addition: Biblical Hebrew. God has blessed me and fulfilled my lifelong desire to read the OT in the original Hebrew as I have completed the 5 levels of Biblical Hebrew from the Israel Institute of Biblical Studies. The Bible Study program at university taught New Testament Greek, but not Hebrew.

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This knowledge of languages is merely a tool, however. My goal is not to know more languages, but to know God better myself and make Him known to others, in languages they understand.

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