Guest Speaker: Josh Stertz

My parents (Don and Laura Stertz) were already actively involved in foreign missions work by the time I was born in 1977. I heard the Gospel many times throughout my early years but it was in June of 1982 at a Knights Inn motel that I received Christ as my Saviour during family devotions. I was baptized a year later, and then surrendered to full time Christian service in 1993 after my first missions trip to Eastern Europe (Hungary and Romania). Following my pastors direction, I began working in Junior Church at Wyldewood and continued to work in various ministries of the church for the next 27 years. After graduating from Wyldewood Christian School, I enrolled in the Wyldewood Baptist Bible Institute and graduated in May of 2000. I met Kelli Phillips at her church missions conference in the spring of 1998 and married her in August of 2000. God has blessed us with four children whom we consider our first ministry. I began serving as the Youth Leader in 2011 and was ordained by Wyldewood in the summer of 2013. The Lord blessed me with the training and skill to build houses, and I owned/operated a construction business with another man in our church for 16 years while working in the ministries of the church and throughout my youth pastorate. It costs financially to go on missions trips and I was proactive in setting aside money to take at least one trip per year. In 2017, on one such trip to Europe, God called Kelli and me to join the Couriers For Christ ministry. With the recommendation of my pastor and the confirming verse, II Corinthians 10:16a “To preach the gospel in the regions BEYOND…”, we were commissioned in November 2019 as representatives of Couriers For Christ, sent out of Wyldewood Baptist Church.