About Harold
I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my savior when I was about 8 years old. While I don't remember the date of my salvation, I clearly recall the day I responded to an invitation given by my Sunday school teacher, Betty Dawson, at Blue Ridge Bible Church, in Kansas City, MO. In addition to being my Sunday school teacher, Betty also taught a weekly Bible club for kids, which I attended for several years.
I think of Betty often and while she has gone home to be with the Lord, I can not thank God enough for putting this godly woman in my life. Betty was a true missionary at heart and her field was reaching out to hundreds of children over her life time. Her selfless acts of love and commitment to sharing the gospel have been an inspiration to me even today. Even at that young age, I knew that God had called me to be a missionary and Betty Dawson was the vessel that God used to plant the seeds of this work in my life.
As a young adult, I drifted away from God and lived a worldly existence, far from the direction and light of God's word. Even during those years, God's call remained heavy on my heart. There was nothing I could do to shake what it meant to me and I knew that my life would never be fulfilled until I surrendered my life to Him. Like Jonah, I ran for many years and ended up in the belly of the world, spiritually and emotionally bankrupt.
That is when God gave me, Matthew 4:19 – 20. At that time, I realized that God's call on my life would never become a reality unless I laid down the nets, or the things that were keeping me entangled to this world, and follow Him. In November, 1994, I started laying down those nets and God led me and my family to the Kansas City Baptist Temple. It was through this church structure that God established me and my wife Tammy in His word and started preparing us to answer His call for the mission field.
Tammy and I have been married for 25 years and I am blessed to have a wife who will follow her husband to some foreign land. From the trials and life situations we have encountered before and after 1994, Tammy and I have learned to rely on our faith and the sovereignty of God to direct us through whatever this world has to throw at us.
Our faith has seen us through leaving a good career with a large corporation to become self employed in the field where God allowed us to participate in planting a church. It has also seen us through a serious accident that left our daughter with a severe head injury and 3 fractured vertebras. During those trials and many others, God never left us, nor did He ever forsake us; instead, He proved Himself worthy of our trust to take this next step in our life.
Tammy and I have two wonderful children who are both saved. My 22 year old daughter Ashley and her husband Matt are strongly rooted in God's word and are actively involved in ministry at their church, Seminole Baptist, in Springfield MO. They too feel that God is calling them to the mission field once Matt graduates from Southwest Baptist University. My 18 year old son Chase will be moving to Brazil with us to see what God might have for his life.