from Steve

When I met Gaynelle I heard about her experiences that summer in the Peruvian jungle when she was just 11 years old. Her parents were helping Wycliffe missionaries. She was ready to sign up to be a missionary right then. And more than once she heard about the trip I took around the world during a semester at Baylor. I fell in love with Africa during that time, in fact I ended up being a groomsman for an African friend in his wedding after that.

Gaynelle and I joined SIM in 1987 and really thought that we would spend out adult lives living and serving in Africa. We have, but it has taken on a different form since then. We took our family of 6 to Côte d’Ivoire in 1990 to live 500 miles upcountry and work with the Muslim Dioula people. We had some very good learning experiences there. But since 1994 we have had a US based international ministry.

I have been involved in a pastoral training program in French speaking African countries since 2000. Gaynelle desired to continue ministry in Africa, and did accompany me on a few occasions, but her primary ministry was with our family as the kids were going through high school and then on to college.

Often when I would travel to Africa, the women would ask me, “Where is your wife? When is she going to come and to teach us?” We did plan to add a women’s component to the ministry, but didn’t know when we would begin.

The Beginning came at a very unusual time.

In November 2005 I received the crushing diagnosis of Kidney Failure and Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the bone marrow. I was in intense treatment at the Myeloma Center for Research and Development in Little Rock, Arkansas for the first 4 months of 2006. I had a stem cell transplant which didn’t work and survived a stroke during dialysis treatment. Things didn’t look good for me. We anticipated that I would live a few more months at best per the doctors.

We left Arkansas and returned to Texas for me to recover from all the treatments and just spend the rest of my time together as a family. As soon as I was strong enough to function well, I told Gaynelle, “I want to help you get the women’s ministry started while I am still here.” It seemed ludicrous to some, but it was very important for me to be part of this. It had been our plan all along for Gaynelle to begin work again in Africa, but be based in the US, just like me. We just hadn’t gotten it going yet.

From there the Lord began to open doors. You can read all about that in her achived letters. I have been so very encouraged to see how the ministry has developed, and still to this day endorse all that she is doing – in fact, I encourage her all the more to continue and pray that she will long after I am gone. The Lord is increasing and blessing the ministry of women in 4 countries – and she is going to a 5th one this year! Will you pray for her as she continues? I hope so.

Her husband of 36 years – Steve