Jump to Our Ministry
How you can pray for us:
– Helping our son, Nathaniel, become more independent (spastic quadriplegia)
-Protection – for our family, for EP, and for the Bible translation; Samir is the primary translator
-Wisdom – in all the decisions that are being made with EP, in our discipling relationships, the Bible translation, and in our family and with our kids. Dave’s been traveling at least one weekend each month to try and help his parents out, but they need more help than we can give at a distance.
-Encouragement
– Strength, to always see the Lord before us so we walk always in His ways and in His peace and joy
– For the new teaching materials in the Romani language to get the seed of God’s word planted into the hearts of the Roma people of Macedonia — These are the poorest of the poor in the country.
– For EP for protection, for growth by the Lord’s hand, for God’s word to go out and produce lasting and multiplying fruit, for the Lord to use EP to build up His Church
Our Ministry:
Our family has been involved in ministry almost always. Lee grew up doing liturgical dance on her own and then creating a group in college. In college she led Bible studies and prayer meetings and began running a children’s ministry to at-risk youth through a drug rehab and homeless shelter. (In 2024, the Lord enabled Lee to minister in the city again, even getting the honor of baptizing one of her summer camp kids from nearly thirty years earlier.) After Dave and Lee married, they prepared to go to the mission field, while continuing the inner-city work with children.
In 2002, they went to Macedonia (now known as North Macedonia) as church planters among the Roma (often known as Gypsies). In 2008, they moved to Turkey where they continued living among the Roma and among refugees. It was this year that they walked away from raising support, their missions agency, and such things and stepped out of the boat to just walk hand in hand with Jesus and let Him take care of them. In 2011, Lee started developing Easy Peasy, the all-in-one homeschool curriculum. You can learn more about this time in Turkey and developing EP here and here.
In 2016, having been refused a visa renewal, they eventually accepted the Lord’s hand moving them back to the USA. Dave got his MA in teaching English as a second language and Lee took a coding course and, in time, was able to build the app program My EP Assignments to deliver lessons to the EP homeschool students. The Lord showed them again that He doesn’t want them using the world’s methods of providing for themselves and showed them He still wanted them to just trust Him to provide, so Dave stopped looking for a job. The creation of My EP Assignments increased usage of EP so that donations became enough to become an income. Through Lee’s parents’ decision to move to a retirement community, Lee and her family were able to have her family’s house, where she had grown up since she was a toddler. That enabled them to continue living debt-free, another part of the Lord’s provision for them.
In 2020, Lee started putting some of their miracle stories online to encourage people to not be afraid. She also started creating Bible lessons for EP apart from the regular course lessons. It started as five lessons per week and now has grown to devotional teachings working through the whole Bible. She has added another series of video lessons and has released a monthly-long Bible study for each year. She has also been writing short teaching books on subjects like sin and faith.
At the same time, Dave started work on a Bible translation for the Roma of Macedonia. Macedonia has the largest Roma settlement in the world. We lived there for a time when we were in Macedonia. Dave is fluent in their Romani language and partners with his best friend, Samir, his Roma language tutor who he’s now known for a couple of decades.
The Bible translation is being written down, which is a feat in itself since the language lacks a standardized written form, and it’s also being recorded on audio and made into videos for YouTube and for our RomaniBiblija.com website.
The translation work has expanded to doing an online church for those from Macedonia who speak Romani but are living in other countries. There are a handful of countries represented at the meetings. They meet each Sunday and Dave gives a teaching in the Romani language. Those teachings are also recorded each week and posted online. He leads this along with his translation partner. This may have begun as a way to use and check over the translation, but it has become a loving group of believers and a pastoral role for Dave. He traveled to Italy in 2024 to do some baptisms and to Belgium to support a family in crisis.
Beyond the daily translation work, Dave has been involved in India. Before 2020, he traveled a couple of times for multiple weeks at a time around India, ministering to believers as a guest of a local minister. We have partnered with an evangelist there who has been working for years among an unreached group of low-caste tribal people. He wanted to provide them a school since their children don’t have much access to education. While we discussed homeschooling, illiterate parents and no electricity make it not very feasible. We helped him financially to get a school started. They now have around 140 students and minister to their families and are regularly doing baptisms. In 2023, the Lord connected us to a widow who has taken about twenty children into her care over the years. Along with her church, she’s also involved in prison ministry and evangelism to tribal people. We are finding more people like them in India, who are truly being the hands and feet of Christ, and who were working anonymously without ministry title or support, just living by faith in the God who blessed them to be a blessing. Dave does Zoom calls with them to encourage them and pray with them. He also has a ministry of encouraging pastors in various countries.
The Lord meets all our needs, and in part He uses you and others like you to do it, though He’s not past just miraculously providing. 😉
We pray for you all and truly appreciate you praying for us. We value your prayers!