About

My family and I started attending GCC in March of 2018. In September of that same year, we moved from Lynchburg to Altavista. I am a Christian, husband, father, son, brother, uncle, friend, and librarian. I was born and lived in California, and then lived in Florida and Virginia. I graduated from Liberty University where I met my wife, and we married in March of 1991. Heather and I are blessed to have five children, four daughters and one son. We were both blessed to have been raised in Christian families. I’ve worked for Lynchburg City Schools since 1999. I’ve taught 2nd grade, 5th grade, kindergarten, and now am a library media specialist.

I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He saved me to be His own. The Lord has taken my family and me through some very difficult times. My wife and I have both come as close to dying as one can get and still be alive. She had an allergic reaction and went into anaphylactic shock due to a desert from which she had only taken two bites. We were later told that she was known in the ER as the DOA that didn't die.

In all of that, I know God was and is in control and has never been taken by surprise. Isaiah 26:3-4 says, "You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord God is an everlasting rock." I can honestly tell you that as the EMT was working on my wife, in our kitchen, with our three-month-old daughter sleeping in her car seat, I was calling out to Him to save her. I wanted her to live! At the same time, a peace from God overwhelmed me. I also knew that if He did take her, it was His perfect plan. 

Years later, I was in a motorcycle accident and was airlifted from Lynchburg to Charlottesville. When my wife saw me loaded on the helicopter, I was in such bad shape that she didn't know if I would still be alive when I arrived at UVA.

Our family motto has become, “What a great opportunity!” We adopted this the morning prior to my accident. I explained to my family that when things don’t go the way we plan, we shouldn’t be frustrated, but instead we need to see it as a great opportunity to glorify God. I was able to witness to the medic working on me in the ambulance. I was also able to say to my wife, as I was being worked on in the emergency room, “What a great opportunity this is for us to glorify God.”  I firmly believe that “It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31:8