The Lord had saved me when I was 11. He put the desire in my heart to take up and read the Bible. I couldn't put it down. I gradually moved from the dangerous assumption that 'we're all Christians' to the realisation that I needed to become a Christian. Several Christian schoolteachers were a huge help to me. It wasn't long before I began to feel God calling me to the ministry. For that reason I chose Greek instead of German. At around the age of 15, in answer to the career question, 'What do you want to be...?', I wrote two words: 'missionary minister'.

But I didn't have a clue about the where: a 'missionary minister' where? For the best part of a decade I assumed (another dangerous assumption!) that it would be somewhere in the U. K.I was wrong. The summer of 1981 saw Vivienne and me (with our three-month-old baby son) in Tottenham, north London, getting some experience at a Grace Baptist church. But soon after returning to Belfast and to my studies at the Irish Baptist College, we felt compellingly drawn to continental Europe, and to Spain.

Why Spain? How many times we've been asked that question! The 'funny answer is, 'Well, someone has to do it!' The serious answer is, 'Continental Europe is our Samaria. We're always jumping over Samaria to get to "the end of the earth", but Samaria needs the gospel too.' Yes, Spain was, and is, a sophisticated modern democracy, with thousands of churches, but how many of Spain's now nearly 50 million people have really heard, understood, and embraced the true gospel of Christ?

We landed at Málaga Airport on 15 October 1983 and found ourselves on Spanish soil for the first time in our lives. It was the beginning of a 37-year adventure. Even in mid-October, the heat hit us! We had a language to learn – properly. We forced ourselves to keep trying olives, gazpacho, and seafood, until we loved them! There were hard experiences ahead; the hardest was missing our families, and – even harder – knowing how much they missed us. (Include that in your prayers for cross-cultural missionaries.)

Those 37 years (from 1983 to 2020) can be summarised in just a few lines. I became a pastor. Vivienne and I did what most pastors and their wives do. Yes, we were in Spain, with all the cultural and other differences from the U. K., but gospel work varies only in the details, not in its essence. It's all about applying God's Word to all sorts of people in all sorts of situations with all sorts of needs. We helped to plan and run camps. We did what we could to support training and publishing. We made a lot of mistakes. But the Lord was merciful and kind.

And then I became EMF mission director, and we had to move back to the U. K. for 3.5 years. We experienced reverse culture shock. And it was during COVID! As EMF mission director number seven, I was following in the footsteps of some spiritual giants. I often didn't feel up to the job. Looking back, in spite of my struggles, I still think it was right, and I can see some of what the Lord was doing at that time. The mission grew – quite a lot in a short time. The Lord brought a new generation of gospel workers our way, and, through the generous support of so many churches and individuals, enabled us to take them on. As a result, the gospel has reached more people, and a lot of churches have been helped.

That growth made it both necessary and possible to appoint a field director again, after many years without one – someone to pastor the EMF missionaries and Ukrainian gospel workers. Vivienne and I (because it's definitely been the two of us together) have been trying to care for well over 100 EMF family members in 20 countries. There have been countless text messages and e-mails, phone calls and video calls, and visits to 18 of those 20 countries.

Just this year there have been visits to the Republic of Ireland, North Macedonia, Portugal, Poland, and Norway. These last official visits have reminded us (as if we needed reminding!) why we love EMF: in some of the hardest mission fields in the world, faithful, gospel-focused, hardworking, and gifted men and women are chipping away in mostly small local churches; the gospel is being proclaimed, disciples are being made, leaders are being trained, churches are being pastored, new churches are being planted, and the gospel is reaching and having an impact on individuals, families, and whole communities across our needy continent!

As I transition to the next stage of life, I'm learning to differentiate between being a pensioner, which I am, and retiring, which I have no intention of doing any time soon! The apostle Paul spoke of the Lord as ‘The God to whom I belong and whom I worship’ (Acts 27:23). Whatever stage of life we're at, if we're believers, we belong to the Lord, and we live to worship him.

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