I was born on December 26, 1978 in Toledo, Ohio.  My mom, Jeanie Blessing, raised me as a single parent.  I had no brothers or sisters, and I never knew my father.  I still remember the day my mom shared the Gospel with me when I was about four years old.  We bowed in my bedroom and I asked God to save me.  Later, my mom worked hard and made sacrifices to send me to a Christian school where I learned more about the Bible and the Christian life.

When I entered eighth grade, I began attending a public school.  There, I started hanging around a bad group of friends and rebelled against God and my mom.  If you could have seen me when I was fourteen years old, you would have thought, “There is no way that kid is a Christian.”  I had long hair, baggy clothes, and a skateboard.  I was no different from my friends who did every bad thing you can think of.  I remember one time I went to a party, and the next day I couldn’t even remember a thing about the movie we had watched the night before.  I was so caught up in the bad things I was doing that my mom didn’t know what to do with me.  One time she took my skateboard away, so I went behind her back and bought another one.  When she found out, she was furious.  Still, I went to church most Sundays and if you had asked, I would have said that I was a Christian.

Around that time, my mom bought me a new Bible.  God prompted me to read it, and the more I read it, the hungrier I became for God’s Word.  I began to feel convicted about the way I had been living.  One night, I remember lying in bed crying and asking God to forgive me and change me.  That night I recommitted my life to Christ.  From that day forward, my life changed.  I stopped hanging around those bad influences.  I began to get involved at church, attending every service I could.  God was working on my heart and preparing me for his service.

At Monclova Road Baptist Church, God awakened in me a strong desire to serve him.  All throughout high school, my vocational goal had been to become an automotive engineer.  I subscribed to several car magazines and attended auto shows.  I wanted to design cars for a living and lead a comfortable life in the United States.   However, the more my relationship with God developed, the less important designing cars seemed to be.  No matter what kind of car I designed, one day it would end up in a junkyard somewhere.  I came to the point where I realized that I needed to use my life to do something of eternal importance.

Around the world, innumerable people have never heard the Gospel even one time.  I felt called to commit my life to serving God on the mission field so that those people living in darkness could come into the light.  In obedience to that call, I traveled to Papua New Guinea on a mission trip.  There, during the summer of 1997, God confirmed my call to the mission field.  I saw for myself the real need and despair of people without Christ.  I remember sitting before a group of village elders who asked that one of us come and bring the Gospel to their village.

That fall, I began studies at Liberty University in order to prepare to serve God on the mission field.  There, under the teaching of great men and women of God, my passion for the Lord and missions grew more intense.  In 2000, I traveled to Senegal on a mission trip where I was deeply impacted while participating in ministry among the Sereer people.

During my last semester at Liberty, I met a lovely young woman named Billie in a missions class.  After a few years of correspondence and dating, I knew that she was the one God had for me, and I asked her to be my bride.  God first called us to missions, and then he called us to each other.  We were married on May 31, 2003.

After Liberty, I enrolled at Southern Seminary to study missions and church-planting.  I gleaned from the wisdom and knowledge of more great men of the faith.  I read countless books on missions and researched various people groups.

During my time at Southern, I also became involved in the ministry of a local church composed almost completely of African immigrants.  This church focused upon ministry to refugees and internationals from such countries as Sudan, Liberia, Nigeria, and Rwanda.  At this church, I stepped into the role of Minister of Evangelism and Missions, and began organizing and leading the outreach program.  In May 2004, I graduated from Southern Seminary with my Advanced Master of Divinity degree.

In January 2005, Billie and I were appointed by pioneers to serve as missionaries to Guinea, West Africa.  We spent about a year traveling the country sharing our vision and raising support.  In April 2006, we left for West Africa.  Since that time, we have been adjusting to life and ministry in Africa and studying language and culture in order to minister effectively.  Our vision is to plant churches in Guinea that will have a passion for reaching the entire country with the Gospel.

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Billie's story