Go to the Ripe Fields First!: Focusing Outreach on Receptive People (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780976516804)

Doug Gehman grew up in the Mennonite community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. After high school he traveled west to Goshen, Indiana for college (the first in his family to go to college) and met his wife, Beth Ann, in the church he attended in the community. They were married in April 1976 and soon felt God's call to overseas missionary service. Doug and Beth first went to Asia in 1978 as itinerant missionary evangelists. In 1984 they pioneered their own ministry and began conducting open-air crusades all over Sri Lanka and Thailand. In 1987, after observing a high degree of receptivity in one people group, they targeted the Indian Tamils who work on the tea estates in Sri Lanka's hill country. Over the next eight years they helped plant 35 churches among these "estate Tamils" and won several thousand to Christ. In the years following, the national leaders with whom they worked, planted an additional 60 churches in neighboring regions. This church planting movement eventually grew to nearly 100 churches with 35,000 members. Doug attended Goshen College and Fuller Theological Seminary, and earned Master's and Doctorate degrees in Missions at Liberty Christian University in Pensacola, Florida. Doug now serves as the President and Director of Globe International, a non-denominational missionary sending agency in Pensacola. Doug and Beth have ministered in over 50 nations. They have four children and eight grandchildren. Books and works by Doug Gehman include: -Go to the Ripe Fields First! Focusing Outreach on Receptive People -The Treasure of the River Kwai (youth, fiction) -The Journey - a Modern Adaption of Jesus' Prodigal Son Story (a musical stage production) -White Picket Fences (a story about growing up Mennonite)