I, Nancy, moved to Chapel Hill in 1975 to take a job as a nurse at UNC. On the first Sunday morning in town, I noticed someone leaving from the next apartment carrying a Bible so I followed their car into campus, but then lost sight of them. I noticed someone handing out bulletins by Gerrard Hall and asked them if this was a church. It was, indeed, and that began a long and happy relationship with Chapel Hill Bible Church.

My interest in cross-cultural ministry began early with missionaries visiting the church my father pastored in PA. I was captivated by the stories and pictures brought by medical missionaries. After nursing school and working for several years, I attended a student missions conference sponsored by InterVarsity and began pursuing a mission hospital assignment. In 1978, CHBC commissioned me to missionary service to work with HCJB, now known as the Reach Beyond ministry. After a year of Spanish language study, I began work in 1979 at Hospital Vozandes in Quito, Ecuador. I returned to Chapel Hill in 1981 to complete a degree in nursing and a graduate degree in public health, anticipating a return to Ecuador.

I met Dick in 1985 when I was completing my MPH. Dick felt called to missions while attending a missions-minded church during medical school. During the InterVarsity Urbana Missions conference in 1970, he made a commitment to pursue missions. He worked in general practice with Native Americans in Arizona and Alaska to gain more cross-cultural medical experience but was drawn to the behavioral sciences after seeing the needs of this population. He completed a psychiatry residency at Duke, taught at the Medical College of Georgia and after we married in 1986 at the CHBC's Mason Farm Road location, Dick and I pursued a missions assignment with Wycliffe Bible Translators and their field organization, the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Again, CHBC committed to support us in prayer and finances early on in our missions career, and did so faithfully for the next three decades.

We joined Wycliffe in 1990 and our overseas assignment began in 1993 in Nairobi, Kenya, ending in 2015 when we relocated back to the US. During our 22 years in Kenya, Dick worked with a team of psychiatrists and counselors at Tumaini Counseling Center, providing care for missionaries throughout East Africa and consulting with staff in other parts of Africa. I joined him as a counselor after completing a Master’s in Clinical Psychology at Wheaton in 2009. Wycliffe has a counseling office at the JAARS Center, near Charlotte, NC, so after returning to the US, we worked there, providing psychiatric and counseling services for Wycliffe, SIL and JAARS staff. Many were preparing for or returning from an overseas assignment.

In 2020 we moved to Lancaster, PA to be nearer to family. While officially retired since October 2023, I continue to do counseling virtually for Wycliffe two days a week. Dick has been helping with adapting Bible-based trauma healing materials for military personnel and their families and training facilitators in leading healing groups.

Vivian and I came in contact with the Chapel Hill Bible Church in 1970 when it was still in its “birth pangs.” I was entering the UNC School of Social Work in their masters program and Vivian worked as a nurse at Gravely Sanatorium. It was exciting to be part of what God was doing in Chapel Hill in those early days. What a blessing we found in the fellowship and good teaching, both of which have impacted our lives even to this day! Just think, some of you have been praying for us for more than 50 years!

After graduating, Vivian and I moved to Wilmington, NC where we participated in a local Bible Church that again was just getting started. After two years of working for the Department of Social Services, the Lord opened a door for us to be part of a two-year team of young people to help start a church in Cartagena, Colombia. What an opportunity to see how the Lord can take a small step of faith and do great things! During our first years in Colombia, Ray Hackney, who had become a personal friend and later became one of the elders at CHBC, came down to visit us and was a great encouragement.

When the Lord led us to return to Colombia as commended missionaries in 1977, CHBC became more actively involved with us, offering us counsel as well as prayer and financial support. We initially spent 6 months in Bogota to study Spanish, and then moved to Tunja. After a total of 6 years in Tunja, we moved to Duitama where the Lord used us in planting and building up a church for 25 years. A team of 14 young CHBC adults came down to Colombia in 1989 to help us for two weeks in building a basketball court at our camp, as well as being a tremendous testimony to the believers. Following our time in Duitama, we moved to Yopal to begin a new work again. After 10 years there, we returned to the USA and now live in Wilmington, NC. We usually make one or two trips to Colombia each year to visit the churches and encourage believers. We continue to serve the Lord here in Wilmington among both Spanish- and English-speaking contacts. We praise the Lord for the freedom He has given us to serve and invest in others. We are very thankful!

During 1969, as a couple of young Christians, Ray Hackney and I, Curt, walked all around the UNC campus praying for all the places on which we set our foot (Joshua 1:3), asking God to bring into being a church fellowship. I left the area for a few years and came back to UNC in 1975 for an MPH, newly married to a Yankee girl, just like his Southern background grandma had feared.

During grad studies, Marcia and I attended the CHBC in Gerrard Hall, a believing fellowship now in Chapel Hill – a whole bunch of people in Chapel Hill loving Jesus and loving others. We left again in 1976 for work and grad studies at the University of Wisconsin, completing my doctorate there in 1980.

By 1981, Marcia, Danielle, Nadia, and I were in Beirut, Lebanon, supported in love, prayer and gifts from the CHBC congregation. Dangerous days. Multiple evacuations of Marcia and the girls from hostile combat. During the 1982 invasion of West Beirut, I volunteered in a “pop-up” dispensary. One of our patients was a 20-something Palestinian woman, intellectually challenged, pregnant for the second time and inconsolable because of the bombing and shelling. She later died in massacres in Palestinian refugee camps at the end of the invasion. Her death changed the direction of my life. Because of her, there is a Questscope, whose motto is Putting the Last, First. CHBC was absolutely critical to the forming and sustaining of the vision and the organization of Questscope. We have been able to do astonishing things with marginalized and refugee young people and their families. We have served Iraqi refugees, Syrian refugees, Palestinian refugees and low-income Jordanians – youth surviving in lives of poverty, exploitation, and exclusion from education, instead of thriving with their talents and ambitions. I retired as executive director of Questscope on April 1, 2024. A young Arab with an amazing heart for the Last has succeeded me, and Questscope continues with new leadership.

David: In the fall of 1974 two CHBC gals my age (housemates of Judy’s) met me when I was a patient in UNC hospital. They invited me to come for a meal after I was released from the hospital. So I gladly accepted their invitation. It turned out to be a weekly gathering of a CHBC small group, and my first evening there the guys in the group provided the meal! I continued to attend that group, and started attending CHBC a couple months later.

Judy: A classmate invited me to CHBC on Graduation Sunday, May 1973. I still remember the sermon about serving. After that summer in New England, I returned to Chapel Hill to seek a job, and began attending CHBC.

When did you first become a CHBC missionary?

Our commissioning service at CHBC was held on May 6, 1984. We left for southeast Asia on May 27. At that time our son Jonas was 3 years old and our son Joel was 6 months old.

When and where did you serve?

We served in Indonesia from August 1984 until August 2017. We are traveling back to Indonesia this summer!

What are 2-3 highlights of your time as missionaries?

David: I worked with others to set up a Christian radio project that began shortwave radio broadcasts by FEBC in the language of a local Muslim people group in 1990.

Judy: I ministered to (taught) Christian women and Muslim women and children.

David & Judy: We set up a handicraft project (making Advent season wall hangings) in 2009 that employed Muslim women and led to some becoming followers of Jesus.