A Note from the Pastor:
At the age of 18, I was invited to church by the young lady who is now my wife, Kami. It was sitting next to her at the Winkler Road Baptist Church of Fort Myers, FL, that I heard the Gospel message plain and clear for the first time in my life. And on March 4, 1993, I turned to Christ and trusted Him to be my Savior. Kami, had accepted Christ as her Savior at the age of 5 and had grown up at Winkler Road Baptist Church. On July 2, 1994, we were married and what an adventure we have had together in serving God wherever He has taken us!
After graduating high school, I entered and served in the U.S. Air Force from 1993-1997. While studying to be a dentist in the military, God got a hold of my heart and I surrendered my life to be a preacher and separated from the military to enter full-time training at Bible college. I trained in the ministry under the great preacher, Dr. Jim Brown, at the Crossroads Baptist Church and the Crossroads Baptist Bible Institute in Carthage, MO. It was here that I began working in the various ministries of the church as I trained in the Bible college. What an exciting time I had learning to be a Sunday school teacher, Junior Church director, nursing home preacher, church janitor, and bus captain/driver on one of the church bus routes.
Five years later, God moved my family to be on staff at the Central Baptist Church of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. This was my first full-time position in the ministry where I served as the bus director overseeing 8 bus routes, served as the Bus Ministry youth director, Junior Church director, Christian schoolteacher, and became one of the sports’ coaches. Then it was time for us to take another step in God’s ultimate plan for our lives. He would move our family “full circle” back to Ft. Myers, Florida, to work for Pastor Don Strange at the Winkler Road Baptist Church. While serving as a bus captain/driver, teen youth director, juvenile detention preacher, SS teacher, and Junior Church worker, God saw fit to lead my family to surrender to be missionaries to the West Indies in February 2006 with the Macedonia World Baptist Missions.
After deputation and language school (learning French) were completed, we spent 3 years laboring in the French West Indies for the Gospel’s sake. One day, Kami became severely ill and we were ordered by the doctors on our island to return to the U.S. for medical care. Upon detecting the signs of lung and blood plasma cancer and then the diagnosis of Lyme disease, we realized that we could not return to the West Indies as Kami was undergoing medical care. It was recommended by our Pastor and Mission Board that we pray about planting a church in the U.S. while undergoing my wife’s medical care. After much prayer, God led us to plant the Victory Springs Independent Baptist Church of High Springs, FL on March 22, 2015. It has been a blessing seeing the church grow as we continue my wife’s treatments at the University of Florida – Shands for the official diagnosis of Myasthenia Gravis.
After realizing that God was calling us to make High Springs our permanent home, the church voted me in as the full-time pastor at the end of 2018. We are absolutely thrilled to be here in High Springs and for the future that God has for us here at the Victory Springs Independent Baptist Church! We hope you will pray and consider being a part of the family here at VSIBC!