Founders Profile

Founders and International Coordinators

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”

This motto has guided Bill and Linda throughout life, initially to have travel adventures around the globe, and ultimately, to embark on the spiritual adventure of surrendering more and more of their own wills to the only Sovereign God and His Son, Jesus Christ.

Linda, born in New York City into a Christian family, has always known Jesus as her Savior, but it took meeting Bill in Bangkok, Thailand, when she was 24 years old, to spur her into giving Jesus Lordship of her life. Strangely, at the time they met and eventually married, Bill was not a Christian!

Bill was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England. His mother was an Orthodox Jewess who married a Catholic, resulting in Bill being educated by nuns in a Catholic school. As soon as he was a teenager, he rejected religion and chose to live life his way, acknowledging God exists but was not relevant to him.

Each traveled and lived “on the edge” before meeting each other.

Upon graduating as a professional nurse, Linda promptly went to nurse in the Appalachian Mountains with the Frontier Nursing Service. From there she lived in Germany for years, nursing in a German hospital in West Berlin, leaning to speak German by total immersion. From there she went to South Vietnam during the war to nurse in an orphanage in Saigon. When she left Vietnam, she traveled solo to Hong Kong and then to Bangkok where she met Bill. It was love at first sight!

Bill, after graduating as a Weighing and Testing Machine Technician, immigrated to Australia where he worked, among other places, in the remote and arid Northern Territories. At one time he hitch-hiked around Australia, sometimes waiting days for a car to come by, and once awaking in the dead of night surrounded by a group of silent aborigines. Eventually he decided to go to South Africa to work in the diamond mines. He sailed from Australia for Singapore on a cruise ship filled with beauty contestants! Bill’s overland journey from Singapore to Bangkok, brought him to that fateful meeting with Linda. Yup! It was love at first sight!

They decide to make Canada their new home, traveling there in an ancient VW van with a top speed of 40MPH, no heater, and which “died” as soon as it delivered them to Edmonton, Alberta in the dead of winter. Within a year they left the city for the untamed wilds of the Yukon Territory where they lived for 5 years, 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle. Bill worked in a large lead and zinc mine as millwright and maintenance planner; Linda worked in a Nursing Station. It was in the Yukon that they learned to cross-country ski (often at 30 F. below zero) and to canoe (sometimes for 2 weeks at a time, seeing no other human soul).

Since the Yukon, they have lived on Salt Spring Island and Clearwater, British Columbia. Clearwater is now home base. Bill worked for years as a Back-Country Ranger in a nearby wilderness park and Linda worked in the local 10-bed rural hospital. It was then that Bill and Linda started their annual winter trips to Latin America. They first went as tourists, then as short term volunteers for various social aid projects.

All this time, 20 years, Linda prayed for Bill to accept Christ as his personal Lord and Savior. As she prayed for Bill, God drew her closer and closer to Himself. He was also working on Bill in various creative ways that Bill recognized but chose to ignore. Finally, while they were working in Nicaragua for a 2-year commitment for a private foundation, God “nabbed” Bill and wouldn’t let him go. Bill finally accepted Jesus and started his amazing “fast-forward” walk with the Lord.

Two years later, in 1999, Bill and Linda traveled to San Cristobal, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala, BOTH motivated by Christ’s love to serve the Pokomchí tribal group living in the mountains of that area. They have been there ever since, first with the Christian organization Food for the Hungary, then with the Christian organization Helps International. In 2004, God, through amazing miraculous events, led them to form their own Christian organization, Hope of the Pokomchí, ASOSAP.

Their passion is to preach the Gospel by the way they live their lives, and to mentor others to reach the full potential that God intends for them.

They continue to “live on the edge” - of their own resources and strength, depending daily on God’s faithfulness and provision.