Hello Friends,

Special Family News Update . . .

November 8, 1980. A Day Like No Other For Us… Our Wedding . . .  

This Saturday we will celebrate our 45th wedding anniversary. We met in Bible School in Oklahoma and we had just known each other for about seven months when we said our “I DO’s” on that chilly November afternoon in Gainesville, Florida in 1980. (See photos and more info below about our wedding day)

As with most marriages, it has been an amazing adventure. When we started dating in Tulsa, as things became serious, we talked about possibly being missionaries. (Although we can’t say how serious we took it at the time.)

But now 45 years later, after living in multiple countries around the world, four kids and now five grandkids we look back in amazement.

We never want to ‘sugar coat” things. We had our share of challenges, like years with very little finances, ministry challenges, family challenges, we had them all.

But we can both say what held us together, and it’s still true today, is that we both felt “Called to Serve as Overseas Missionaries.”

We are celebrating our 45th Anniversary by going to Costa Rica for a few days later this month. We lived there for five and a half years back in the 1980’s. So it will be nice to use our Spanish again, visit all the old places we lived and maybe even look up some of the churches we ministered in. So nice.

Our 45th Wedding Anniversary

We were married in Gainesville, Florida on November 8, 1980. We had just moved from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Florida. Gainesville five months earlier to work with a new church that was getting starting.

We were going to serve as unpaid childrens workers and we both got regular jobs. I (Jim) managed a convenience store and Brenda was a secretary at a friend’s plumbing company.

You will notice I had a mustache at the wedding. Three days after the wedding it was gone and never came back.

We knew NO ONE in the city of Gainesville when we moved there. But then five months later we had a small wedding at a quaint church building. It was a simple wedding with maybe a total cost of $1000 for everything. Yes, everything! But it worked for us. And it still is working.

We took a week long honeymoon to beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. We still remember how the leaves where changing and we stayed at a small cabin with a fireplace that cost about $20 a night. It was wonderful and we made a lot of memories.

And we are still making memories 45 years later.  Fourteen months later in January 1982 we moved overseas to begin our lives as missionaries.

Special Ministry News Update . . .

In the last two weeks I was once again in Budapest, Hungary and Sofia, Bulgaria. This year we will have seen SEVEN new churches started in Eastern Europe. It’s always great visiting with the key pastors and leaders we have worked with for so many years to reach their nations with the Gospel.

As I sat and talked with one of the Bulgarian pastors and he shared with me about his church and the multiple outreaches I could see the passion he had for his country to come to know the Gospel.

What also impacted me was how he thanked me over and over for the long term commitment to him and his ministry and his country. I of course was humbled as I realized we could not do what we feel God has called us to do without people like him.

This same Bulgarian pastor, Filip, also started a Roma (Gypsy) Church in Bulgaria that we were able to help with. (Read more about this below.)

Starting Churches With Gypsies – Always Exciting

Different Culture – Different Challenges – The Roma

There are between 5 and 10 million Gypsies (who are called Roma in Europe), throughout the nations of Eastern Europe.

Quite often they have their own culture, their own language, their own style of dress and live in their own towns and villages. They are also some of the most marginalized people in all of Europe.

They are also some of the poorest in all of Eastern Europe. Because they are not typical Romanians, or Hungarians or Bulgarians, or Slovaks, often they are left to themselves.

Through some of our amazing national partners, friends and others in Eastern Europe we have been able to help start many new churches in these Roma Communities.

We don’t talk about these outreaches so much in our e-letters because these outreaches and new churches are long term projects and even though we invest in them, it’s the pastors that put in the long term challenging work to make these churches go.

We so so admire the leaders like Filip in Bulgaria and our friends, Mark and Valerie in Slovakia. They are amazing leaders who are called to these special people.

Earlier this year we were able to do this in Sofia, Bulgaria. Filip, one of the Bulgarian Pastors we have worked with for years reached out to us to see if we would invest $4000 for this new church.

We are thrilled to tell you the church is doing great and meeting regularly.

About six years ago we were able to work with some of our friends in Slovakia that are working with the Roma there. The photos here are of an outreach to a community where we were helping them to start a church. These photos can give you an idea of how amazing the Roma people are.

We are grateful we can be a small part of reaching these precious people that sometimes are a very neglected part of society in Eastern Europe. Thank you for helping us do this.

We invest at least $4000 to help start these new churches. Can you possibly help with one or part of one in the next year? We are looking to see at least SEVEN more churches started next year, in 2026.

We continue to absolutely love doing what we do and have no plans to anything in our ministry anytime soon.

Serving in our 43rd Year as Missionaries,

Jim and Brenda