Dave and Judy both grew up in Christian homes and in churches that believed in preaching the gospel to ALL nations, so both were well exposed to missions. But it was an Ethnos missionary with his real-life accounts of reaching the hidden peoples of the world that ignited in Dave a huge passion to reach them for Christ.
Judy’s desire to grow in her relationship with the Lord led her to Bible school. There, God challenged her into missions, and there God brought her and Dave together to pursue God’s passion for the unreached.
They married in 1990 and signed on for Ethnos missions training in 1992. For the next four years, they made every effort to prepare for the field, with Dave in construction and Judy in medical training. Then in 1996 they set out for their first assignment in Papua New Guinea.
They served in a number of support roles before joining a church planting team among the Mengen people. Then came the day when the team had translated sufficient Scripture to share “the gospel of Christ,…the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes” in the heart language of the people and within the context of their culture. A church was born as God gloriously set free a people once enslaved by sin. Though the church experiences growing pains, it continues to mature.
While on furlough in 2015, a Woodland Cree Elder/evangelist pursued Dave, eager to learn how to effectively build a church that would continue to mature. He asked if what had been developed by Ethnos overseas could be shared with his people here. This was the beginning of ‘Establish – A foundational disciple-making series.’ Now, through Establish, God is beginning to bless both aboriginal and non-aboriginal churches right here in Canada.