Missionary Timeline
Bill and Debbie Crawford met at Baptist Bible College in fall of 1984 and were married on May 24, 1985.
On December 11, 1986 they had their first daughter Tiffany while attending BBC.
In May of 1988 Bill graduated from BBC and the Crawford Family moved to Houston, Texas to work at the North Park Baptist Church.
In their first year of ministry work at NPBC, from May of 88 to May of 89 Bill was the Young Married Class Director.
In May of 1989 Bill took the position of Youth Pastor at NPBC.
On October 7, 1989 Bill and Debbie's second daughter Heather was born.
In May of 1990 Bill and Debbie felt the leading of the Lord to New Mexico to take the position as Camp Directors of Christian Singing Hills Youth Camp where they had worked while on summer break during their last college years.
So from May of 1990-December of 1999 Bill, Debbie, Tiffany and Heather Crawford lived, worked and built a life at the Singing Hills Youth Camp just outside of Albuquerque, NM.
During those years they literally saw thousands of young people make decisions to receive Christ as Lord and Savior towards surrender to full time ministry and many other decisions for Christ.
Yet things were about to change for the Crawford family once again.
Bill and Debbie both desired to see the Lord do great things through them whether they were at Singing Hills or serving Him in full time Missions.
So they began to pray and seek the Lords leading. And the Lord began to reveal Europe to them as to direction of ministry.
Over the period of about 6 months the Lord began preparing them for this next big adventure.
So in August of 1998 they went to candidacy school in Springfield, Mo and in September of that same year they were approved in Sherbrook, Canada at the Fall Fellowship Meeting to the field of Slovakia.
They had made plans to leave the Camp but due to events out of their control they were called back to the camp for most of 1999.
The Missions director at the BBFI - Dr. Bob Baird placed them on inactive status and told them to call him whenever they sorted things out.
In Dec. of 99 Bill called Dr. Baird and he re-instated them in January of 2000 to the field of Germany.
Things had changed in the direction in regards to Slovakia - doors that appeared open in 98 had slammed shut and had opened wide for Germany -- Bill and Debbie decided to walk through.
They finished up their deputation in August of 2001 and on August 22, 2001 they arrived in Germany to start their new life as BBFI Missionary's to Germany.
They started off their ministry in the southwestern part of Germany for approximately a year and a half and then the Lord called them to the North eastern part of Germany. A former communist controlled Dresden.
For the past 5 and a half years Bill and Debbie have lived in Freital, Germany just outside of Dresden.
And for the past 2 years now Bill has been the Pastor of the International Baptist Church of Dresden.
We are just a baby church and have acquired out first building as of May of 2007.
We are so excited to see what the Lord is doing with our little church.
We are seeing young Germans and Internationals also coming to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, being discipled and growing in their faith walk.
It is a challenging and yet profitable work. We praise the Lord that He has called us to do this work here in Dresden.