The seed for my adventure was planted in the late 1940's when I was taking a world history class in middle school located in Batavia, New York. It was a required class and once each week we saw a film on a different world culture. I found each one interesting, but one in particular stood out. Its focus was the region around southern China. The music, the people and their customs caught my attention and sparked an interest in that culture.
As the school years passed my focus stayed with farming and construction with no plans to go to college, but God had other plans. During the summer between my eleventh and twelfth grades I had the opportunity to travel from Batavia, New York to Philmont Boy Scout Ranch, located in Cimarron, New Mexico. The group consisted of nine boys and three leaders. The plan was to drive three cars, each with a leader, three boys and their gear. The leader and driver of my group turned out to be a Christian who was living out his faith. He found a number of opportunities to stress the importance of Christian values and was an effective mentor for us. I was already a believer, but God used him to cause me to think about my walk with the Lord and the direction of my life.
The hiking and camping at the ranch in the mountains provided an environment for God to really take a hold of my heart. I sensed he was directing me to prepare for college. When my senior year began school administration agreed to allow me to take a fifth year to prepare for college entrance. I decided I would study Agricultural Engineering with an emphasis on structures with the idea I could use this knowledge on the mission field.
To make a long story short I didn't go to the mission field but taught at the college and university level for twenty years and then transitioned into software development for a national Christian radio network. On the side I studied the Bible daily, wrote Bible studies and taught Bible classes at my home church. Finally it was time to retire and spend time hiking in the mountains outside my home in Tucson, Arizona, but God had other plans that would soon surface. He connected me with a missionary friend, who had just returned from the Middle East for a short furlough, who talked about the developing home church in China. This discussion of the home church stimulated an interest in me to learn more about them. Several books were suggested on how to establish and operate a home church. In the United States these home churches usually have a little different nature and are known as small groups associated with large churches. Reading these books caused me to seriously consider making some changes in how I taught Christian material. I began to see the value of moving from standing in front of a class and lecturing to sitting down with a smaller group, of under 20 students, and leading a discussion. It took me several years to effectively make that transition, but it has been a very rewarding one. During this transition I sensed the Lord’s leading to move to Texas and live near our grandkids. Actually it was to get me one step closer to China. We made the move and settled into McKinney Fellowship Bible Church (McFBC), which was known for its small group ministry and was also very active in Asia. I quickly became involved in its small group ministry by deciding to lead a small group. This was a very rewarding experience and provided an opportunity for the leadership of the church to learn more about me. This resulted in an invitation to join the church staff in attending a small group seminar. At the seminar I was asked to attend the next staff meeting and take part in the discussion about the seminar we had just attended. It was at this staff meeting that I was asked to join the teaching team that was going to China.
I accepted the offer and went and spend eight days teaching in an underground training center. It was there that I learned that this training center was part of the home church movement and was preparing missionaries to be sent across Asia. To realize that God had taken me from hearing about the home church movement from my friend in Tucson to now actually teaching missionaries for the movement was a very humbling and exciting experience. Being in such a training center and teaching these students was another important piece of the Asian picture for me.
Enough background as we are getting ahead of the story.
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