As a teenager attending a Christian winter retreat with his youth group, Gordon heard the Gospel presented clearly.  The speaker described him perfectly when challenging the teens with the Scriptures pointing to personal sin, independence, pride, self confidence, and rebellion.  Gordon was convinced that he didn’t need God in his life.

On the second day of the retreat, he experienced a series of events that shook his self-confident world to the core. While heading to the slopes to go inner-tubing with his friends, he became separated from his youth group in a snowstorm.  Desperately trying to find them, Gordon lost his footing, rolled off a cliff, and landed on his feet.  Knowing full well that his life could have been snuffed out right then and there, Gordon had to admit that God had gotten his full attention.  He gratefully opened his heart and life to the One who created him and had the very best design for his life.

Gordon received Jesus Christ as his Savior and Lord at the foot of that mountain.  The search and rescue operations of his youth group were successful, and he was reunited with his friends as a new believer.  That night in the chapel, he went forward to tell the world that he was now a born-again follower of Jesus Christ.

Gordon was discipled by his home church and by the Navigators in college and then in the military. The Lord later led him to Western Seminary to prepare for full-time ministry.  While attending seminary he met Debby, and they were married on June 17, 1978.  Upon graduation, the Lord opened the door for the Andersons to begin full-time ministry with American Missionary Fellowship (now InFaith).  They served as area missionaries on the Olympic Field in western Washington State, providing pastoral leadership to communities throughout six counties of the Olympic Peninsula.

In the fall of 1989, the mission’s leaders asked Gordon to prayerfully consider taking a larger responsibility as Southern regional director and moving the family to Dallas, Texas.  Following the Lord’s leadership for their family, the Andersons loaded up the U-Haul truck and moved to Mesquite, Texas, to begin a ministry that would influence the work of the mission in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.  Fourteen years later (2003) Debby and Gordon were asked to prayerfully consider moving their family back to the Northwest to direct the work of the mission in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.  “We are continually praising the Lord for blessing us and allowing us to be a blessing to the [InFaith] missionary family,” Gordon says.

“On December 19, 2007,” he recalls, “we received a call asking us to prayerfully consider my becoming the director of ministry resources.  Our willingness to serve in this capacity is based on our wholehearted commitment to God and our belief that He could and would use us as part of the mission’s leadership to lead [InFaith] toward revival and continuing fruitfulness in obedience to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ.”

The Andersons continue to live on the West Coast, where Debby is a kindergarten teacher and children’s book author/illustrator. (Her books are published by Crossway.) Both Gordon and Debby have a passion for sharing Jesus Christ with their neighbors and reflecting God’s love in creative and relevant ways in their community.

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Bryce’s parents were missionaries, and each week the family went to two or more of the Sunday schools or churches for which his father was responsible.  “It seemed our house was always filled with volunteers,” he says. “With over two dozen active mission points, lay pastors often stopped by for advice, youth workers came for direction, and staff for summer camp and Vacation Bible Schools needed guidance.  Helping others gain the same love for Christ we enjoyed was the focus of our family, and I thrived on the excitement of meeting new people, being a part of change, and the constant activity.”

While in college Bryce became the youth director at one of the mision’s churches and later, during graduate school, he served as the area director for nineteen churches on what had once been part of his father’s mission field. After graduation he was invited to start the Ministerial Education and Training program in the Home Office, a program on which he worked for fifteen years. Since that time he has been involved in a number of ministries through his local church and with an area youth program. His business experience in the pharmaceutical industry and knowledge of the mission led to the opportunity to serve on the Board of Trustees as the chairman of the Policy Committee and on the Development and Audit Committees.

Today, Bryce is charged with the responsibility of managing the operational aspects of the mission he has loved so much since childhood. His primary assignment is to work with the management team to see that InFaith’s missionaries have the programs, structure, and resources needed to bring the Gospel message to those in America who are otherwise unreached.  Acts 20:24 describes well the focus of Bryce’s life and ministry today: “But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (ESV).

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Buffy’s career as an administrative assistant and office manager included working for several start-up companies and a Fortune 500 company. Seeking to use her gifts more in areas that could make a difference for the kingdom, she spent a number of years as her church’s senior administrative secretary. In 1998, she began working for Forest Home in southern California, where Ridge Burns, InFaith’s executive director, was then president. She has been working in our mission’s Development Department since September 2009.

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