JEFF
I grew up in the small farming town of Osceola in southern Iowa. I was the first child of Jim and Beth Brown, still of Osceola. I have three sisters: Julie of northeast Arkansas, who has two grown children; and twins sisters, Mary of Des Moines and Susan who, along with her husband Ed and their daughter, lives in Houston.
Born in Des Moines, we moved to Osceola, where I enjoyed swimming, tennis, piano, high school sports & music, and biking. I graduated from Clarke Community High School in Osceola in 1976. My hobbies are still playing music and sports.
Upon graduating in 1976, I went to Drake University in Des Moines. I earned a bachelors degree in Actuarial Science in four years.
As a teenager my core world-view was that man had made God in his own image, as a crutch for hope and a tool for doing good. Later I believed that God in fact made man in His own image, but that Jesus was just a “good teacher”. Later still I came to believe that Jesus basically was who the Bible said He was, but I didn’t feel a personal need for Him. The summer after my freshman year of college in Des Moines, a youth leader in Osceola took a group of us to a David Wilkerson rally. It was there I became a Christian. That day God showed me who He is, why Jesus came, who I am, and my Need of Him. A huge, supernatural change that attended this “rebirth” was that on that day I began believing the Bible was absolutely true, having no longer any intellectual obstacles to it.
In 1980 I started working as an actuary for Mutual of Omaha in Omaha. In 1982 I struck out to travel and find a different, more people-oriented career. After some time in the southwestern United States, I headed for the east coast, visiting Omaha en route. I ended up spending almost a year there because I was severely beaten up, hospitalized, and spent the next months recuperating. It was during this time I met people from Westside Church, pastored by Calvin Miller. A roommate, Todd, held a Bible study in the apartment I was staying in, so I sat in on it. I saw for the first time what real discipleship was -- how the Christian life is more than a belief or church attendance, it is a life, a whole life.
In 1983 I moved to Washington, DC to be part of an organization called the Community for Creative Non-Violence as a full-time volunteer. I spent two challenging years there living and working in the 1,000-bed homeless shelter. Two years later I moved to Portland, Oregon where I worked for a small non-profit agency called Outreach Ministry in the skid road section of downtown where I lived.
While in Portland, God showed both me and a friend, Dave in Omaha, the joy inherent in obedience. We both saw that baptism was one of those obedience points for us. I flew out to Omaha and we were baptized together at Westside Church, in the winter of 1986.
After about a year in Portland I believed God wanted me to return to DC to work with homeless people. I lived on the streets there for six months. While there I learned much about my place in God’s plan. So in 1987 I moved to Lincoln where I knew of a new church, a group to which I felt I could make a commitment – New Covenant Community Church. At New Covenant I served in several areas, both on staff and as a volunteer.
In Lincoln I continued to work in direct services, then management, in the human services field, with people with physical disabilities, with people with mental retardation, and with homeless families – all along working part-time with New Covenant Community Church.
Since childhood I have always been interested in other countries and cultures. But after becoming a Christian as an adult, I didn’t want my personal interest to be what drove me into overseas work – I wanted it to be God. In June 1996, God strongly impressed upon Diane that He wanted us to pursue full-time overseas work. I had never been overseas, but when Diane told me what she was thinking, I immediately knew it was God. He said Go.
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