Who ARE we? Many of our friends and family have been asking that question for years! 🙂 We’re just Larry and Dede. That’s all. Our story really isn’t “our story” at all. It’s God’s story because his hand-prints are all over our lives together. To say that God has a sense of humor would be an understatement. Who but God would take two people whose native language is English, but who in college were in the English language ‘misfits’ class – the class designed for those who, even though they had been speaking English all their lives could not seem to put correct sentences together and thus needed ‘special’ training – and later send us first to spend 12 years in Hungary where we had to learn to speak Hungarian (ranked by linguists as being in the top 5 most difficult languages to learn), and then send us to the Middle East where Hebrew & Arabic are spoken. God has a sense of humor all right! The Bible states that God uses the weak to confound the wise and these two grammatically-challenged people hold on to that promise with all our little grammatically-challenged hearts! Wait….is it grammar-challenged, or grammatically-challenged? See what I mean?

We are best friends who met in college and have been loving each other and growing more in love for almost 34 years.  Trying to do our best to follow after God’s heart. Sometimes stumbling along the road, but always urged forward by Hands offering grace and mercy.

It is our commitment to love with the heart of God in an area of the world that is growing increasingly dark. To “pitch our tents” among the Holocaust Survivors and Jewish people of Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union…to the nation of Israel in the Diaspora.     In a book by, Shane Claiborne we read…“We are people who shine, who burn up the darkness of this old world with the light that dwells within us. And perhaps the world will ask…what in the world passed through here. We are not just called to be candles. We are called to be fire. Candles can be snuffed out by the slightest wind…but it’s harder to put out a fire. We are to be fire. To weave our lives together so that the Spirit’s inferno of love spreads across the earth. In an age of omnipresent war, may we stand by those who face the impending wrath of empire and whisper, God loves you, I love you and I will be right here with you.”