Both of us were raised in Christian families. Jann attended Columbia International University and then got her Masters in Linguistics from the University of Texas at Arlington. She also spent 1986-1987 in Japan on a short-term mission with TEAM. Kevin got his Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration and spent 20 years in Business and Information Technology, working for Delta Airlines and then becoming the CIO for the Vestin Group in Las Vegas.

1990s
Our real journey to missions started in the 1990s, when two deaths in Kevin’s family caused him to refocus his life on the Lord. We were married in 1995, and became involved in our local church and small groups in Atlanta.

2000
We moved to Las Vegas, NV and became very involved with Life Springs Christian Church (formerly Warm Springs Baptist Church), including service as deacons and small group leaders. We both were involved in the Missions Committee, which Kevin chaired in 2006. Our interest in missions continued to grow as we each took the Perspectives course, read current books on missiology (especially by John Piper and Steve Saint), and were involved in the adoption of an unreached people group in Equatorial Guinea (EG) by WSBC, which was done in partnership with Wycliffe.

2004
Jann traveled to EG and Niger with the team tasked with determining which people group our church would adopt. In EG she met Scott Smith, team leader for the Wycliffe work there, and he mentioned how much of an impact someone with both computer and linguistic experience could make in the translation process. This started ongoing discussion and prayer about our possible contribution.

2005
Kevin traveled to EG with a WSBC team to discuss initial strategy for reaching our adopted group with our partners there. Further discussion with Scott Smith while there led to discussions with the larger SIL Branch in neighboring Cameroon.

2006
Following discussion at the Language Study Personnel Committee of SIL Cameroon in March about Kevin’s qualifications and the possible impact of computer technology on translation in the 260+ languages in Cameroon, we were invited to join them. We began the application process for Wycliffe.

2007
We attended the Wycliffe Training Camp and were accepted by Wycliffe. We were then formally invited to Cameroon to assist with the translation efforts there, and Kevin was invited to become part of the Adapt It software development team part time while in Cameroon.

2008-2009
Kevin earned his Graduate Certificate in Applied Linguistics from the Canadian Institute of Linguistics.

2010
We spent a year in Massy, France learning French!

2011-Present
We have been living and working in Yaoundé, Cameroon