Meet the Prof

I grew up in East Africa and I wouldn't trade it for the world! I have been called a white mukamba. Read on to see if you can figure out why.



It began in 1947 when at the age of five months I went to Kenya, Africa after World War 2 with my missionary parents on a converted military ship called the Marine Jumper. It took three weeks by ship to get from New York City to Mombasa, Kenya in those days. (And by ship was the way poor folk travelled in those days.) In those days we would not see the U.S.A. for five years at a time. Quite a commitment my parents made!



Before any of my siblings were born, my playmates were African kids from the Akamba tribe. Is it any wonder I learned their language of Kikamba at the same time I was learning English? I'll prove I can still speak it if you ask me. Little did I know how this would help me when I did my doctoral research among those people many years later.



Around the age of 8 a mysterious eye disease hit me which forced my folks to make a painful decision. They had to send me at age 9 to live in the U.S. with relatives for hospitalization and tests. Little did they know that this would last a whole year and a half. What a sacrifice for all of us! Getting back to the U.S. involved a near plane crash and a voyage on the Queen Mary 1 ocean-liner. But those are other stories.



The night before I was to fly back to rejoin my family in Kenya, my grandparents took me to hear Billy Graham speak in Madison Square Garden in New York City. I made the decision that night to invite Jesus Christ to control my life, which is another way of saying I became a real Christian by choosing to follow Christ. I was eleven years old then.



During the following years I went to school on the edge of the earth's largest crack -- The Great Rift Valley. Here God spared many lives from being slaughtered by the bloody Mau Mau freedom fighters who lived in the jungles around the school. Know how God did it? A whole band of fiery angels, believe it or not!! That's yet another exciting story! Angels have been pretty important to me since those days..



At one point in the following years, we had to remain in the U.S. for two and a half years, sad that we might not see Africa again. This was due to eye problems with my Dad, my brother and myself. Sounds like heredity might be a clue in this mystery disease. They later discovered a name for it -- Reiss-Buckler Corneal Dystrophy. How's that for a mouth full?



We did get to return to Kenya and I had wonderful teen years enjoying big game hunting, music, sports and student leadership opportunities at the Rift Valley Academy. Even got to climb Africa's tallest mountain (also the world's tallest butte and volcano) before I graduated. They call it Kilimanjaro. Kenya finally got past the bloody Mau Mau days and got its independence in 1963. I stayed up all night as part of a student security force where the school was stationed.



I returned to the U.S. for college, thinking I was going to be a flying medical doctor. I even used to watch surgery cases at hospitals in Kenya and Tanzania, so I was pretty serious about it. My plan was to get two years of Bible education and then transfer for pre-med and medical school. But God had another plan. He used others to tell me that I had a teacher's heart and so I ended up getting both a BA and MA in Biblical Education. What is more is that I learned that God's goal is for us to actually know Him, not for us to be religious. The eternal difference between those two things is incredible. Ask me about that infinite difference between being

religious and relating to God on His terms!



After college my first real job was as Christian Education Director for a New Jersey church. After a year in this administrative position, I moved to Media, Pennsylvania to teach Bible, History and Social Sciences along with coaching track and field, sensing that I would be a foreign missionary of some sort.



Just when I was being accused of becoming a confirmed bachelor, God brought along a gorgeous gal named Karen Sellers and through a very interesting process gave me the wife of my dreams. She also had aspirations for the foreign mission field. I joined her mission organization and we began plans to move overseas. Guess where?

We were assigned to go to Kenya, where I had grown up and to teach at the Nairobi International School of Theology. When we were about three weeks from going, we hit a sudden, unexpected detour! The school wanted me to begin working on a doctorate, since they were training graduate students. That detour lasted about five years while I did the course work at Temple University in Philadelphia.



To make a long story shorter, we finally got to Kenya by January 1, 1986, where I did my field work in educational anthropology among guess who? ( Clue: Remember "white mukamba"). After six years of teaching, working with Kenyan leaders and field research, we returned to the U.S. to write a two volume dissertation (unbelievable!) and finally graduate after a long 12 year process. (I think I could have become a medical doctor in less time.)



At this point, God shocked us into an unexpected course change! After 12 years of doctoral studies and research in order to teach in Kenya, there was a change in administration and we were suddenly not needed so we returned to Kenya for a few months to close up, sell our belongings and return to the U.S. wounded and discouraged. Our dream of a career in Kenya came crashing down !!



We were welcomed back to the U.S. by an organization that not only wanted us, but had been praying specifically for people with our qualifications and a mission to minister to university professors. Our four year commitment has now turned into over fifteen years where we reach out to universities and professors in the greater Texas area. My key passions for professors are that: 1) they clearly discern the eternal difference between being religious and relating to God on His terms; 2) they learn to discover God's relevancy in every area of their lives, including their academic disciplines; 3) they develop a biblical worldview, and 4) they become lighthouse professors for students tossed in the cross-currents of university experiences -- shining the twin beams of God's truth and God's love through their lives.



WOULD YA LIKE TO KNOW MY CLAIMS TO FAME? Then read on . . . .



1. I can look at life from both male and female viewpoints. How? Well, due to my eye problem, I have had corneal transplants in both eyes. In one is the donated cornea of a girl and in the other the cornea of a man.



2. Coldest night in my life was spent in a frozen cave on the equator! How? I was 17,000 feet on the slopes of Africa's highest mountain and the world's tallest volcano. That's Kilimanjaro.



3. I attended a school miraculously saved from a marauding band of about 300 bloody Mau Mau by platoon of fiery angels of God which scared the machete warriors into the jungle never to touch the area again. That was in the early 1950's.



4. I walked and talked Kikamba with the Father of Kenya --- its first president, Jomo Kenyatta.



5. I have the longest MA thesis on record at Columbia International University and did a two-volume doctoral dissertation. What a wind bag!



6. I have often ridden the "Lunatic Express" which opened up the heart of the Dark Continent to the world at the turn of the last century. Today it is known as the Kenya Railway. It was built in the face of man-eating lions, squeltering heat, greatly varying topography, and a host of tropical diseases!



7. While a student in college, I had the privilege of leading singing for Cliff Barrows -- the world renown song leader for the large choirs of the Billy Graham Crusades -- when he came to our campus as our special speaker. Imagine that!