About Me

Mike was born and raised in a small town in the Northwest Montana Rockies called Whitefish near Glacier Park. He grew up fishing and hunting and enjoying all forms of summer and winter activities. He attended high school in Minot, North Dakota and undergraduate college in Moorhead, Minnesota. While attending college, he worked as a night and weekend butcher and shift manager for a small family owned neighborhood grocery store and as a manager trainee in a local family owned hardware chain. After earning his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and Management, Mike entered the U.S. Army as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Intelligence Corps.

Mike met and married his wife Karen in El Paso, Texas after a tour of duty in Vietnam as a reconnaissance and surveillance pilot. They have three children, Nathan (1985), Riley (1987), and Kaitlin (1991).

After serving 29 years in Army Intelligence and fixed wing aviation, Mike retired from the Army in 1999 as a Colonel. While in the Army, he served in various staff positions throughout the world and commanded intelligence and aviation units at all levels, most notably at the NATO military headquarters in Mons, Belgium during the crises in Bosnia and Desert Storm and the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a capstone assignment, he served as Director of Intelligence for Joint Staff Force Six in El Paso leading 65 men and women from all services in providing intelligence, analytical and architectural support to law enforcement agencies nationwide in the fight against illegal drug production, distribution, and use.

After retirement from the Army, Mike served for a year as the Archuletta County Veteran’s Affairs Officer in Pagosa Springs, Colorado and subsequently moved his family to New Braunfels in 2001. He soon entered Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos to earn his Masters in Secondary Education. After a brief period as a high school math and business teacher in Schertz and New Braunfels, in 2004, Mike began working as the Church Administrator and bookkeeper for New Braunfels Bible Church. Mike and Karen are Charter Members of the church, having been part of the original group to spawn from Northeast Bible Church in Garden Ridge in 2003.

Mike and Karen have lived throughout the U. S. as well as overseas in Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Japan, and Mike has also served in the Republic of Vietnam and Honduras. They have traveled and enjoyed many other foreign countries in their 12 years of overseas living. Mike also has a second master’s degree in Electronic Systems Engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California. Karen has worked in administration, banking, and real estate, has a flair for foreign languages, and enjoys meeting new people.

Mike has served as a volunteer in other locations in a multitude of church ministries; as a deacon, council president, secretary, and treasurer, church school superintendent, bible teacher for 2 year old through adult, and AWANA leader. He has also served as a Scout leader and little league and adult softball coach.