Larry was born and reared in Toledo, Ohio.  He was the third born of ten children. His church background was Methodist, but the family was not committed to going to church faithfully.  He started attending a Child Evangelism Good News Club where he heard the gospel and after a time he realized his need to be saved at the age of nine.  A few years later he was able to attend Gull Lake Bible Conference and at the age of twelve, he felt the Hand of God upon him once again and surrendered for missions.

There was a rescue mission in downtown Toledo that was run by two very Godly women, Miss Geneva DeBord and Miss Ellen Lewis. Through his best friend, Charlie, Larry was invited to this mission to a Friday night Bible Club.  These two woman became very involved with Larry's whole family and through their guidance, Larry went to the Baptist Bible College in Springfield, MO.  To this day, Larry calls these two women his "Mothers in the Lord."  While at the college, Larry met Michele Schuh and became engaged to her.  He finished schooling before Michele and went up to Wisconsin to work as a Youth Leader for year.  He came back to marry Michele and to let her finish her schooling.

By the time had Michele completed her college work at BBC, Springfield, they had a daughter, Michel.  Larry then took an internship in Albuquerque, NM at the Fellowship Baptist Church.  He was there two years, teaching a young married adults class, working with the older youth, soul winning, and leading the music at most services.  At the end of that time in Albuquerque, they were accepted by the Baptist Bible Fellowship of Springfield, MO as missionaries to Kenya, East Africa.

When Larry and Michele first went to Kenya in 1976, the Lord blessed their ministry with numbers of souls and the establishment of four churches.  Larry had started three churches by the middle of their third term.  In the height of our third and best term,  God saw fit to take Michele to be with Him in Glory.  They brought her home for burial and then Larry and the children returned to Kenya to finish the term and to see their Bible Institute graduate seven men and one woman.

Two years after Michele's home-going, Larry began to pray for another woman to love; one who would love his children and Africa the way he did.  During that furlough year the Lord gave him another wondeful wife.

Martha (Marty) was born and reared in Elkhart, IN and attended the First Baptist Church from the very beginning of her life.  Her parents and grandparents all were members of First Baptist.  Marty wasn't saved until she was 14 years old and wasn't baptized until she was 19.  During that time, she had become very active in her youth group and the church itself.  She worked with the children's church time in the Early service and then going to Sunday School and the second church service.

When she was 19 there was a family home on furlough from Peru that had a great impact upon Marty and it was during that time that she surrendered for missionary service.  The following fall she entered Cedarville College in the Elementary Education program.  Upon graduating Marty taught second grade in the Elkhart Public Schools for three years before going before the Baptist Mid-Missions board.  She was accepted in 1973 to teach missionary children in Ghana.  She arrived on the field in the fall of 1974.  She continued to teach MK's for the next seven years while also working in a couple of villages on the weekends.  In 1981 there were no MK's on the field to teach and at the same time there was an opening in the Bible School to teach English as a second language.  The field approached her to take over the English classes.  She did that until the middle of her third term in 1985 when she had to return home for surgery.  Her teaching position in the Bible School was given to an African. When she returned to the field, she never experienced the Lord's perfect peace in another ministry and began believing that her work in West Africa was finished.  After counseling with her pastor on her next furlough, she was led to resign but she could not understand why the Lord was asking her to leave Ghana and its people whom she had learned to love dearly.  Ghana was her home.

The day after her resignation was final, Marty's aunt in Arizona arranged for Larry and Marty to write one another.  They met for the first time a few weeks later in a church just outside of Chicago, Illinois, where Larry was involved in a Mission's Conference.  A few months later, Marty moved to Arizona (where Larry was living with his family) and stayed with her aunt and uncle.  And a few months after that they were married.

Marty fully believes the Lord brought her back to the States to marry Larry, to help care for his children, and to go back to Kenya to help in the Lord's ministry there.

They have been married for 12 years now and have had a wonderful relationship with each other, and for Marty, with Larry's four children.  They have served the Lord in Kenya together since 1991. Marty has been active in women's ministries in the churches that Larry and his first wife started; she has also taught in one of the Baptist Bible Fellowship Bible Schools close to Nairobi; and she has opened her house as a "guest house" many times to missionaries when there was nothing else available to missionaries from out of town.