My worldview began expanding around 2012 when I started supporting a missionary family through Adventist Frontier Missions. As a partner through prayer and giving, I was blessed to have a part in reaching the unreached. In 2020, I had the opportunity to partner with another AFM missionary family launching to Papua New Guinea.
While attending the 2023 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting, I wrote down my name and email on a form to learn more about AFM, though I felt I already knew quite a bit. Afterward, convicting recruitment emails began filling my inbox. In one, the most convicting, AFM recruiter Kyle Tumberg cited Romans 15:20: “Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation.” I prayerfully decided to apply for career mission service on August 24, 2023.
After my AFM interview at the end of November 2023, I was asked to pray about where God was calling me. John Baxter, AFM Director of Human Resources and Recruiting, after he had conferred with the Human Resources Committee about my application and interview, recommended projects in the country of Georgia and with the tribes in Papua New Guinea. On December 14, 2023, I knelt and prayed:
“Lord, I don’t feel especially called to either Georgia or Papua New Guinea.”
As the words “Papua New Guinea” came out of my mouth in prayer, the Holy Spirit fulfilled His promise to “bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” (John 14:26). Memories began surfacing. On March 3, 2007, I had become a Seventh-day Adventist, and on October 25 of that year, I strongly sensed God’s call on my life to be a pastor. The Lord then reminded me of an experience from 2008. I was 21 years old and in my Grainger Hall dorm room at Pacific Union College, listening to a message on the infinite love of God. Deeply moved by how He “so loved the world” (John 3:16), I distinctly remembered God putting “Papua New Guinea” on my heart. That was it!
On December 19, 2023, during my AFM Orientation, God clearly confirmed that He was calling me to serve among the animistic Ama tribe of Papua New Guinea when the Human Resources Committee unanimously accepted my choice. I was elated! If I could express my joy in that moment, I was “off the charts” — happy beyond words! To be in the center of God’s will is the greatest thrill this side of heaven.
While God answered so many prayers for me to start serving as a pastor in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on June 1, 2015, I am heartily embracing this next step in His service. I am thankful to those already partnering with me in this mission, committing to pray and give so God can help me answer His call to go and share the everlasting gospel of Christ with the Ama people. He wants to release them from animism to ignite from among them a Seventh-day Adventist church-planting movement. Would you prayerfully consider partnering with me?
