Born and raised in the Yuba-Sutter area, the only time I left the area was to go to college.  During my college years, I pretty much identified myself with the “Hippie Culture”.  My years in college were pivotal years filled with practical and philosophical learning and questions.  Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that there must be a God and I was not him.  Through a series of events, very personal and significant, I discovered for myself that Jesus Christ loved me with an everlasting true love.  This realization I had come to was so important I decided to take a leave of absence from school to focus on what it meant to be a Christian, a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.  That decision lead to two of the most significant events in my life.  I met the woman that would be my wife of 35 years and I was introduced to the trade of painting.  I so enjoyed the trade and challenges of the painting industry, I continued to make it my life’s vocation.  Since 1973, I have enjoyed the fulfillment of being part of  thriving business that has served thousand of customers and trained numerous men to be proficient, professional journeyman craftsmen with some going on to successfully run their own businesses and provide for their own families.  Very rewarding indeed.

                                   
I was raised in a military family as an only child and traveled (mostly in the U.S.) extensively.  I spent a portion of the Vietnam era in a small state college in West Texas and when I graduated with a degree in Management Engineering (Operations Research in some circles) I was drafted and trained to go to Vietnam, first as a pilot and secondly as a Communications Officer.  Death and my own mortality  became very personal to me during this training and I was medically released from the Air Force with 100% disability in 1973.

Very trying personal times humbled me before God (if He existed) as I began to search for the meaning of life (and death).  I placed no hope in and had no leanings toward religion.  God intervened, rescuing me, my marriage and my family.  I stepped from death to life, the lights came on, everything clicked.  He has kept me, led me, blessed me beyond my own plans.
I have been privileged to live and work with the confidence and peace that I am doing what He wants me to do where He wants me.  I continue to strive daily to apprehend that which I have been apprehended for.  Phillipians 3:12