My Story

I was born into a Christian home in Connecticut where I went to church with my family and attended a Christian school. As I was growing up, I tried hard to follow the rules and be “good,” thinking that it would bring happiness to those around me, and ultimately to God. When I was fourteen, my family moved to Pembine, Wisconsin so my dad could attend Northland Baptist Bible College to prepare for the ministry, and it was there that the Lord really began to work in my heart. It was during a Wednesday evening service at Northland Camp, just before my sixteenth birthday, that the Holy Spirit brought conviction to my heart and I realized that my salvation is not based on any righteous things I had done, but because of His mercy (Titus 3:5), and I placed my faith in Christ and called on His name (Rom 10:13) to be saved.

Almost immediately after salvation, I had a growing sense that God wanted me to invest my life in full-time service for Him, but I did not necessarily have a dramatic, point-in-time call to the ministry. Instead, I would say that God’s direction in my life to now be involved in vocational service as a missionary was a series of single steps of obedience, as God revealed His will. God first directed me, upon graduation from high school, to enroll at Northland Baptist Bible College to prepare for a life of ministry. I often wondered if God might not be leading me back to New England, where I grew up, to be involved in planting churches in that area. This burden for the people of New England and a desire to be involved in church planting led me to change my major from pastoral studies to missions in order to better prepare me for this type of work. While the Lord’s direction for my life was not church planting in New England, the focus on missions was definitely in His plan. As a requirement for the missions program, I had to take a missions trip, and the Lord opened the doors for me to be part of a five week trip to Cameroon, W. Africa during my junior year. It was on this trip that the Lord opened my eyes to the needs of the world in general, and gave me a particular burden for the people of Cameroon.

The Lord also used this trip in a different way in my life. Among the group of six Northland students on this trip was a sweet young lady who, a year and a half later, would become my wife. I thank the Lord for a life’s partner who is not only committed to me, but also had a deep commitment to the Lord and the work of missions even before we ever met. Karis (who’s name means grace) is God’s gift of grace to me.

The summer before we were married, God directed me to Colonial Baptist Church in Virginia Beach as part of a summer internship program. Although this was not what I had in mind for working the summer before were to be married, the Lord used this simple step of obedience in taking a summer internship to shape the rest of our lives. Through the time I spent at Colonial that summer, the Lord revealed to me that He desired to bring us to Virginia Beach to have me prepare further for ministry at Central Baptist Theological Seminary. We praise God for the training we received through the seminary process, as well as the strong foundation we received for our young marriage through the ministry of Colonial Baptist Church.

After completing four years at CBTS and receiving my Masters of Divinity (M.Div.), I was looking forward to being done with school and pursuing missions, but the Lord saw fit to put that on hold for one more year as He led me to pursue a Masters in Education (M.Ed.) at Regent University. Although I did not know it at that time, the Lord was using this additional time of training to prepare me and provide the credentials that I would need to be involved in the ministry He has for us in Africa. Karis and I praise the Lord that He has not only been directing our paths each step of the way, but that He has given us the faith to follow and be obedient to Him even when the path is unclear and the next step didn’t seem to make sense.

Since my graduation from Regent, Karis and I have been preparing to follow the Lord’s call on our lives to Cameroon, W. Africa as missionaries with Baptist Mid-Missions. We arrived in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, in August of 2008 and are working on learning the French language so we can better minister to the people here. We have two little girls, Kayla, who was born in August of ‘05, and Krista, who was born in October of ‘07.

You can find out more about us by visiting our website, www.danandkaris.com.  In addition, you can read the latest news from Cameroon, courtesy of Google News.