My faith has been extremely important to me since I was a little kid. I hope that it is not only a deeply personal part of my life, I hope that those around me are continually affected by how it has impacted my life.
     

I feel it is very important for every person to come to terms with where they came from. Whether the parents and grandparents that have gone before us filled us with warm memories or they scarred us in different ways emotionally, it is important that we recognize our heritage. This is so we can properly deal with our own legacy and the heritage of our children.

I love my parents deeply and appreciate all of their love and support throughout my life. I did not have an idyllic "Leave It To Beaver" childhood, but I did have a very pleasant one full of loving memories. My father and mother always openly expressed their love for me. They always said that they believed in me and thought I was special. It is because of this that I believed in myself as child and now as an adult.

My parents also openly lived their lives as Christians in our home. They were extremely active in the churches we attended and took me regularly. They example self-sacrifice and service, even today.

Even as I have reached my mid-thirties and have a family of my own, I still appreciate my parents and the relationship we have. I still get a warm feeling when we go over to their house for a Sunday afternoon. They each have an active role in the lives of my wife and children.

Several years ago, I wrote my mother a poem for her Fiftieth Birthday. A couple years later I did the same for my dad on Father's Day. Poem for Mom ~ Poem for Dad

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My marriage and children are a complete blessing from God. I am not yet comfortable enough to place on this website the full story of how I met my wife and how our family developed. I have written the high points below that will give you the overall picture.

My wife and I met in church and were married shortly after. Much credit for our early relationship being grounded properly goes to Rev. Rich, who was our pastor at the time. He helped two very young and immature kids grow up a little and start a marriage that has grown tremendously over the last 15 years.

We had two children early on in our marriage and we were very poor. I worked at a moving company driving a truck and operating a forklift in a warehouse. This was a very low paying job that made it nearly impossible to survive. Thankfully, my parents provided a lot of support for us during those first couple years.

I later started working with my dad as a night auditor for a hotel so that I could go back to college full time. This was a very difficult time for us as I was either working or at school attending classes and studying. I did not see my wife and two children very much during this time. Even though I was able to get a 4.0 GPA with 18 semester hours, I was completely burnt out after one year.

A family friend at that time found me an opening for an entry level job at a consulting company. This was another tremendous blessing from the Lord as I have been with that company ten years now and make a decent living as an executive there. During those ten years, God has added four more children to our family. For my wife and I, the plan was always to have large family and we feel extremely blessed that God has given us six children.

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As I have grown and matured as a man, I have realized that the only real lasting thing that I will leave on this earth is my children and their future generations. The more I think about this, the more I realize what a huge task I have before me in raising children that will make an impact on the world through their lives and their childrens' lives.

The vision that my wife and I have for our family is that we would always be close. This includes our childrens' children and their relationship with each other. We pray that the future generations that follow us would follow God and positively impact the world for good.

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As I have mentioned in previous sections, I was raised in a Christian home. Because of my parents involvement in church, I regularly spent two to three days a week attending meetings at church. Through those times I came to have a personal faith at a very young age. It is typical for a person who is a Christian to point to an exact date for when they accepted Jesus into their hearts. For me it was such a young age that I can not give a date.

I have tried to live my life according to the teachings of Christ but I can say for certain that I fail more than I succeed. I think that this is the true beauty of my faith. The Christian faith is built on the concept of forgiveness and redemption. It is through this that I am able to keep going knowing that my relationship with God is secure. It is a process where I keep growing in that relationship.

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I have been involved in Christian ministry most of my life. I began teaching Sunday School as a youth, was a camp counselor and served in several leadership positions in the church growing up. When I came back from my first year at college I began working with the youth group of my church. It was not very long before I was doing this ministry at almost a full-time status. I met my wife during these years and, after a short hiatus, she eventually joined me in this ministry. These were highly involved years where we worked at a fevered pace and ran what was viewed as a highly successful youth group. We deeply cared for the teens we worked with during those years.

We feel that God used that time to prepare us for where we are now. During those years of working with teens, we learned quite a bit through hard experience. Also, during those years we experienced some changes in our own hearts toward our children and a desire to grow our family both in size and faith.

We eventually moved away from youth ministry and into family ministry. Our hearts were for healing marriages and helping parents understand their purpose from God for their children.

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6/25/2006
I have really been feeling convicted lately for not keeping up with my friendships that have been established over the years. I feel that God has brought many excellent people into my life over the last 30 years. There are a handful of these people for whom I developed a deep relationship. I have found that these are truly rare instances when you can connect with someone else on many levels in a relationship. I have began to reach back out to these individuals to try to re-connect on some level. I am not sure if I will be able to succeed in this task. My warmest thanks goes out to these individuals: Bob, Keith, Johnny, Paul, Bruce, Jeff, Jeff, Bryan, Jamie. I am deeply sorry for letting our relationship grow cold through time and distance.

Please email me with any thoughts you might have about this.

Click here for an archive of previous "Thoughts".

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BOOKS
For a detailed list of books that have deeply impacted my life, click here.

MINISTRIES
Vision Forum
Family Man Ministries
Focus on the Family
Family Life

STORES
CBD (Christian Book Distributors)

OUTDOORS
GORP
Great Outdoors

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