Tim

Tim

I count it a gift from God that I was born into a Christian home, to parents who believe and live out God’s Word.  From the start of my childhood, Bible stories were part of my life. When I was four, one January morning at the breakfast table I asked Jesus to be my Savior.  God’s grace is evident as I look back.  He gave me a heart to know him, and from a young age I read my Bible and witnessed to friends.  In the times as a boy that I doubted my salvation, my mom shared with me from 1 John.  Her ministry helped me through times of doubt.  By God’s grace, and through the influence of my parents and youth leaders, in my years as a teenager I made good choices and grew in the Lord.  God’s grace, I think, is just as amazing for preservation as it is for reclamation!
In high school, through the influence of a youth pastor, I began considering full-time Christian service as an option for my life.  A missions trip to Mexico before my senior year of high school motivated me to go to college with a view towards being a missionary.  In college, the Lord used a church missions trip and a summer working with missionaries for a summer in Puebla, Mexico to direct me to service in Mexico.

After graduating from the University of Puget Sound I spent the next year working with missionaries in Mexico City.  It was a thrill to be involved with a church there, learning Spanish, teaching Sunday School and a Bible study, and becoming acquainted with Mexico.  Afterwards, I returned to Tacoma to attend Northwest Baptist Seminary.  God wasn’t finished with my preparation in Mexico, however.  In 1998, my employer sent me to work for five months at the Volkswagen plant in Puebla.  I gained Spanish proficiency, experienced “real life” in a Mexican office, and also had opportunities to witness and preach. 

In 1999 Barbara-Lee and I (we met on a missions trip to Mexico in 1997) married the week after I graduated from seminary.  In 2001 we joined Evangelical Baptist Missions and, after raising a support team, moved to Puebla in 2004 with our 1-year old son, Drew, where we served for five years in a new church, Comunidad Bíblica. We learned much in those years, about Mexican culture, about ministry here, about ourselves, and about God’s faithfulness. God also blessed us with twins, Gavin and Fiona, born in 2006. As God blessed the church and provided Mexican leadership, we went back to the U.S. in 2009 for furlough.

In 2010 we moved back to Puebla, back to the same neighborhood we’d lived in before, this time with God’s leading to invest in the community, serve in a variety of different ways, help form a team for service, and start a church. We are excited about what God is doing, as He seems to be opening doors and enabling us to serve the community in areas of need. We can’t wait to see what He will do!

Ephesians 2:8-10 was my favorite verse as a child and remains so today.  It is indeed by grace that I am saved and I am able to serve God and people in Mexico.

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