Declaring the Glory of God among the nations and the supremacy of God in all things is the central focus of our personal involvement in missions.

Cameroon is a long way from the small, rural Minnesota communities where Patricia and I grew up. When we were married, in 1981, we had no idea that we would enter full-time ministry with Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1990.

We met in 1979 while attending a technical college. Patricia was studying to become a dental assistant and I was studying to become an architectural draftsman. While there, we attended the same Bible study hosted by a small church in the community. She had been a Christian for three years but I really didn’t understand what it meant to be a Christian at the time. Patricia and the pastor patiently answered my many questions as I sought to learn more of what the Scriptures had to say. After a few months, I was brought to salvation through faith in Christ. This was certainly a pivotal year in our lives as two young friends and later as a family.

Soon after getting married, the economy was struggling and I found it necessary to return to school. When I returned to college, I had a deep desire to share the Lord with fellow students. We helped start a Bible study group, which quickly blossomed from a small gathering of six people the first year to a ministry involving more than fifty students the second year. That experience planted the seed, which eventually grew into a desire to enter full-time ministry. After spending three years in the working world, as a radio technician, I longed for a ministry in the spirit of our college Bible study. We began to wonder if God had a new direction in mind. We actively prayed for an opportunity to “do in full time ministry with what we did for work.” God made sure I was listening when he literally stopped me in my tracks! While on my way to a service call as a radio technician in Green Bay, Wisconsin, I was waiting for a ship to pass under a drawbridge. So I tuned in a local Christian radio station. I found myself listening to an interview with a man who was a pilot for JAARS – “Jungle Aviation and Radio Service.” As the bridge was going down, the man being interviewed closed the session by saying “Oh! By the way, we also need other workers including radio technicians. I took an active interest and decided to write for more information.

Three more years went by before we signed on with Wycliffe Bible Translators. Today, after more than 21 years with Wycliffe ,I am training people to work with translation teams to record newly translated Scripture in the mother tongue of the people they serve.

We have primarily served in Cameroon, Africa (if you are looking for it on the map it lies just east of Nigeria) and in Waxhaw, NC (south of Charlotte) at the JAARS center.

We had two children prior to joining Wycliffe and a third just after we joined. Travis is now 24 and is married to Simone. She is a young lady from Switzerland whom Travis met in High school in Cameroon. They are living in Biel, Switzerland. Landon, our second son is now 21 and is married to Sarah a friend from his grade school days here in North Carolina. They are living near Raleigh. Aaron, our third and youngest son, is now 19. All of them enjoy history, drawing and video work I (Larry) enjoy reading books on Christian doctrine history and creating photomontage videos. Patty enjoys journaling our experiences and the lives of the boys. She captures all of our family memories in photo and scrapbooks.