I was born near a small country town in Alabama back when children were usually born at home where a doctor or midwife helped with the delivery which was true in my case. The year was 1943 with a world war on.

My Dad was spared going to war by working on the construction of a national defense project.

The project was an airport built for the training of B-29 pilots. My Dad was a master Mechanic and later made a living as a truck farmer. It was late in life that my Dad recognized God for who he was and himself as a sinner in need of salvation and I am very happy he was born again before he passed away. But unsaved parents have no influence toward children who are on their way to hell.

During my youth I had visited a local church where my grandmother attended and was influenced by her Christian life but still without Christ as my saviour. I was an adult, followed in my fathers footsteps as a Master mechanic with automotive transmissions as my specialty and started my own business and was on my way to what I considered a successful future.

I was married to the woman I have been married to now for 46 years. We have five children and have been blessed with a multitude of grandchildren and even a few Great Grandchildren but what I am getting around to saying is; I was an unsaved husband and father until one day a brother who was in the transmission business with me was murdered. I was called over to a remote place where he was left in a roadside ditch, at which time I looked into the face of death and realized for the first time that I was going to die someday and I wasn't ready to meet a holy God. Shortly after that experience two men from a Baptist Church came over onto the backside of a field where I was clearing some land and simply invited me to church. I accepted the invitation and sat under great conviction as the gospel was preached for some weeks. At home I opened my heart to almighty God and told him I was a wretched sinner and I was sorry for my sin and asked him to come into my heart to make me a child of His. I ask Christ to place my sins under His blood and the next Sunday I was back at that church with the invitation being given at which time I was almost lifted out of my seat by the power of The Holy Spirit and I went forward to confess Christ as my personal Savior. I was baptized a few weeks later. After that; my Wife Merry was saved and our children began being saved until it now is as the book of Acts so clearly states: Acts 16:31-"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shall be saved and thy house". That was April 28th, 1974. I confessed with my mouth the Lord Jesus and believed in my heart that God raised him from the dead and God's word declares that I shall be saved if I did this. (Romans ch. 10:9-10).
 
I can now testify that It has lasted all these years and will see me all the way into eternity! God began speaking to my heart about the call into the ministry soon after I was saved and I began preaching in jails and when ever a church invited me. This went on for a couple of years until I was led to sell my transmission shop, land, cattle and what ever else we could not  place in a uhaul truck and the family and I moved to Greenville, South Carolina where I attended Dr. Harold Sightler's Bible college. My wife also attended some preacher's wife courses and we were members of Tabernacle Baptist Church that was connected to the Bible college. I had already received God's call to the mission field and took missions as a major at Tabernacle Baptist Bible College where I graduated in 1980.

We had been deputizing for two years while attending school and the year we graduated we left for southeast Alaska. I pastored a small mission church there and through our work in Alaska saw the great need for the Gospel in the many villages and towns in rural Alaska where life is challenging to say the least and where many preachers will not sacrifice the comforts of an easier lifestyle to work. Nothing would please either of us more than to spend the rest of our days preaching the gospel in Alaska.

Brother James Tyson -
EMAIL ME AT: jamestysonsr@bellsouth.net