I want to take this opportunity to share with you what God has done in my life and the call of God for me and my family.

I was born on July 9, 1948 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I grew up in a modest home and was well cared for by my mother, who was a Christian and my dad, who was not. We walked two miles on Sunday morning to a Moravian church. My only memory of it was getting my head caught in a banister and couldn't get it out. Needless to say, the church did not have a lot of impact on my life. When I was ten years old, a new church was built a half block from my house. Being ten and tired of walking, I knew it was God's will for us to go to the South Park Baptist Church. Little did I know how much impact this new church would have on my life.

The ministry of the South Park Baptist Church brought me to Jesus Christ. As a fifteen year old boy, I heard an evangelist, J. Townley Davis, preach that I was sinner, but that God loved me and that Jesus died for me. That Tuesday night, January 21, 1964, I repented of my sin and received Jesus Christ as my Savior. I was called to the ministry shortly thereafter. Upon graduation, i made the trek to Chattanooga, Tennessee to attend Tennessee Temple College.

At Tennessee Temple, I received a B.A. degree from the college and B.R.E. and M.R.E. degrees from the seminary. It was at Temple I met God's choice of mate for my life. Cheryl Whitaker and I were married on July 11, 1970. We spent many years in pastoral ministry and in Christian education. God gave us 5 children but on August 30, 1996, God took our oldest son, Pete, age 21, married and the father of an 8 month old baby, back to Heaven to be with Him by means of an automobile accident. This has had a great impact on our lives and ministry.

All through the years of ministry, a love for sports always existed. I coached at many different levels where God has had us ministering. In 1979, my first year of teaching at Tennessee Temple High School, a female student, Michal Mattheiss, asked if i would consent to being the public address announcer for the high school basketball games. I did and it began 24 years of talking sports. In 1985, Joe Ray, the play-by-play radio announcer for Tennessee Temple University, asked me to help him out on some broadcasts. In November, 1992, I succeeded Dr. Ray as the play-by-play voice of Crusader Basketball. In 1993, God again pricked my heart, as He had in 1986, about developing a sports ministry and Victory Sports began, which you can read about in the section entitled "What is Victory Sports?" The first edition of the Victory Sports Update aired on June 21, 1993.

 God continued to use us in the area of sports ministry over the years. God spoke to us about taking sports ministry to another country: Costa Rica. In our middle fifties, Cheryl and I answered the call to be missionaries. We affiliated with the Association of Baptist For World Evangelism and began to raise our support. We had several short term trips to Costa Rica and made our plans to go there permanently. Our progress to the field was delayed by our decision to become the caregiver for my mother. I felt scripturally obligate, as the oldest son to take care of her. She moved into our home in Chattanooga. She lived for two more years before going home to be with the Lord on August 1, 2004. I preached and Cheryl sang at her funeral in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. We then returned to Chattanooga to resume our ministry to go to Costa Rica. We had sold our home and were moving to Sanford, NC, where Grace Chapel Church would be our sending church. On the night we returned to Chattanooga, Cheryl suffered a stroke. After months of hospitalization and rehabilitation, we made the move to Sanford, where I took a position with the Christian television station, WBFT. It became apparent that Cheryl could not stand the rigors of deputation, so we resigned from ABWE

God has given us a good ministry here in Sanford through WBFT, Grace Chapel Church & Christian School, and Victory Sports and we will continue the ministry here until God moves us or takes us home.