About Me

I was born in 1978 in San Antonio, Texas.  My family lived in a little town southeast of there called Lytle.  My dad, Gary, had worked as an aircraft mechanic for the Air Force and the DoD, as a propane truck driver, and a firefighter.  My mom, Gayle, had worked for Joskey’s selling cosmetics but wass now a stay-at-home mom.  My brother, Kevin, and sister, Yvette, were twins and were 5 1/2 years older than I.  In 1979, my parents move to Florence, AL, to attend the International Bible College (IBC), now known as Heritage Christian University.  I have fond memories of picking wild blackberries, snow sledding down hills, driving across “Ghost Bridge”, hunting for crawdads behind Mars Hill, mowing the college grounds on my Dad’s lap, eating home-made pork skins with the college guys, and dipping bread in fresh cream and honey.  Those are really my earliest memories.

In 1983, we moved back to Lylte, TX, as we prepared to move overseas.  My parents had both received degrees in Bible from IBC, and we were headed to the mission field.  As all missionaries do, we have to raise enough support to survive.  So for a few months, Dad traveled around visiting many congregations and selling them on the work we would be doing.

On March 1, 1984, my parents, my older brother and sister, and I flew down to Aruba.  Dad had been there once on a campaign, but it was a new world to the rest of us, including my mom.  This was just one more leap of faith in my families journey through life.  We arrived with only the items in our luggage.  It would be months before the rest of our belongings would catch up with us by ship.  We stayed in a little 3-bedroom duplex with no yard of which to speak.  It was a shock to our system, because there was never any hot water nor air conditioning.

My brother and sister were in the middle of 5th grade, and I was merely in kindergarten.  We were normal American kids who spoke one language . . . barely.  That was about to change!  All three of us were enrolled in the local school system.  All of the education there was in Dutch and Dutch alone.  Our elementary school was a small protestant school which cost us a whopping $25 a year.  Again, there was no air conditioning, and it was customary for the headmaster to come around to turn off the lights in the classrooms when he dimmed the sun bright enough to light our rooms naturally.

A year later, we moved down the road a ways to a rental house that we would call “home” for the next 9+ years.

More to come . . .