I was raised in a very religious Lutheran home. We had to go to church every Sunday, even if the weather was bad, and could not stay home unless we were deathly sick. I learned many of the stories in the Bible and even developed a respect for the Bible. I guess I could say that I even loved the Bible and God, but I didn’t know God. When we were small, my dad even made us listen to Billy Graham when he was on TV. In fact, my dad used a Lutheran devotional book and many times would make the family sit down around the table and have devotions. As a child, I hated that. I would rather have been playing. But God used those times to plant seed in my heart.

In my teenage years I strayed far from the Bible and God until one night, when I was 19, and in a drunken stupor, I had a very close call with death. At that time this question really hit me, “What would have happened to me if I would have died?” For the next eight months, I was scared of dying and sought for peace of mind and soul. I tried reading the Bible and lived in anguish of soul for those months. Then on March 19, 1972, I was at the bottom of the barrel, loaded down with guilt and sin. I took my Bible, sat down with it, and just let the book open by itself. It opened to Romans the 12th chapter. As I began to read, many of the sinful things I had said and done in the past came to mind. With a broken heart I began to weep and told God something like this, “God, I’ve messed up the first 19 years of my life, I’m sorry, please forgive me! I want to give the rest of my life to you.” At that point something happened! The guilt was gone! The heavy heart was gone! I became a child of God!

Around that same time I had a visit from the youth pastor of the local Baptist church. I had visited that church a few times, then was Scripturally baptized in June of 1972, and have been active in that church ever since.

To God be the glory!

My parents (Don and Laura Stertz) were already actively involved in foreign missions work by the time I was born in 1977. I heard the Gospel many times throughout my early years but it was in June of 1982 at a Knights Inn motel that I received Christ as my Saviour during family devotions. I was baptized a year later, and then surrendered to full time Christian service in 1993 after my first missions trip to Eastern Europe (Hungary and Romania). Following my pastors direction, I began working in Junior Church at Wyldewood and continued to work in various ministries of the church for the next 27 years. After graduating from Wyldewood Christian School, I enrolled in the Wyldewood Baptist Bible Institute and graduated in May of 2000. I met Kelli Phillips at her church missions conference in the spring of 1998 and married her in August of 2000. God has blessed us with four children whom we consider our first ministry. I began serving as the Youth Leader in 2011 and was ordained by Wyldewood in the summer of 2013. The Lord blessed me with the training and skill to build houses, and I owned/operated a construction business with another man in our church for 16 years while working in the ministries of the church and throughout my youth pastorate. It costs financially to go on missions trips and I was proactive in setting aside money to take at least one trip per year. In 2017, on one such trip to Europe, God called Kelli and me to join the Couriers For Christ ministry. With the recommendation of my pastor and the confirming verse, II Corinthians 10:16a “To preach the gospel in the regions BEYOND…”, we were commissioned in November 2019 as representatives of Couriers For Christ, sent out of Wyldewood Baptist Church.