It’s a wonderful privilege to serve Grace Church of Old Brooklyn as one of your elders. Laurin and I have been married nearly 40 years. We recently returned to Ohio after 20 years in PA. We needed to be in a larger city to find more help for our special-needs son. And it’s good to be closer to family. We’ve found a warm welcome here and appreciate the heart for worship, faithful Bible teaching and multicultural church family! Laurin retired in 2022 and I’m semi-retired working from home. Besides John (youngest), we have daughters, Carrie, of Erie and Ellen (husband, Tony) of Columbus.
North Canton is my hometown and my family was active in a Lutheran church. After graduating from Hoover High in 1979, I enlisted in the Air Force. The training certainly challenged me! God, in His great kindness – at a point of deep discouragement – brought a faithful group of Christians into my life from the mission organization, The Navigators. One friend urged me to make sure I held a personal faith in Jesus and I gained an assurance of salvation based on 1 John 5:11-12. I was baptized a year after. God used that fellowship to help me grow as a young disciple for a wonderful two years. In a quick turn of events – first of many – the Air Force sent me to Korea. The next quick turn was to Ohio State and engineering! Laurin and I married in 1987 and were involved with a campus outreach to international students which included a short-term mission in Korea. We moved back to North Canton in 1991 as I began work in engineering and after 5 years we returned to Columbus. We hoped to rejoin international students’ ministry, but with 3 young kids, we got involved with a start-up church in the suburbs. In 2001, a plant closure ended my job and God led us to northwest PA. We joined an Alliance Church which blessed us with much-needed stability. We have benefitted from the faithful examples of godly people at every turn. Back home and with God’s enabling, we desire to live out a “simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:3b) and help others do the same.