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Founders
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IMOF was started in 1991 by Gerald and Shirley Davis at their home in rural East Texas. The original vision and mission statement have never changed, although through the years the Lord has developed and increased both considerably to take us into areas we never would have dreamed possible!
We had already had a number of years experience locally in children's ministry, prison ministry and keeping in contact with several missionary families. As we became more involved helping missionaries in Mexico, by sending clothes, medicines and other needed items, we started to make short term mission trips across the Mexican border.
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Gerald
IMOF Inc founder, Lester Gerald Davis, is a native East Texan born on a farm (about 20 miles from Henderson), and raised to fix just about anything! He grew up with a background in the Assembly of God church, and helping in his father's wrecking yard. He spent two years in the army, mostly in Germany, and then married and fathered four children. He was left to raise these four youngsters by himself, which he did for three years (only with the help of the Lord!) until he met Shirley at church, and they were married less than three months later in 1981. Together they went on to have two more children (Mark and Anna) and with this thriving family of six children, quickly became fully involved in children's ministry! In 1987 they moved onto a small farm 8 miles from Henderson, with no money, a big vision, and only an 8 x 40 ft boxcar to live in, and a shallow well 250 yds away! Little did they know that those very hard years would be the Lord's way of training and preparing them for the mission field, and that boxcar would one day become a ministry office!
Follow this link to Gerald's new web page where he shares thoughts and teachings on missions and the End Times Last Days
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Shirley
Shirley's life was quite different! Born in Kent, England, as Shirley Dorothy Osborne, she grew up in a small family in a busy blue-collar town. Fascinated even as a child by stories of other strange lands, she was eager to make her first trip abroad "alone" at the age of 15, when she spent 2 weeks in the home of a pen pal in Northern France. She studied in London to be an orthoptist (assistant to eye doctors), then worked as such in Yorkshire for almost 2 years, before accepting a voluntary position working at a British-run eye hospital in Jerusalem, on the West Bank of Israel. She says that year changed her life, as she witnessed poverty as she never had before, yet also started to experience a great hunger to know Jesus. Less than two years later she spent 6 weeks traveling (over 11,000 miles!) alone by bus around the USA - and it was on that trip that she made Jesus Lord of her life, and immediately "knew" she was to live in America. Through a series of circumstances only orchestrated by God, she moved to the small town of Henderson in May, 1978. There, she finally found the biblical teaching she had been searching for, and plunged into serving God wholeheartedly in a local church, where she eventually met Gerald when he first visited there in January 1981. They were married that Easter and she became instant mother to four children under the age of 8! Needless to say, her life was never the same again!
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The Davis family
Gerald and Shirley's family has now grown considerably in age and number! Mark is the only one who is still unmarried and lives on the family property, though he frequently travels all over the country with his job as an engineer in design technology. Anna, the youngest, got married in 2004, and has recently moved to make a new home in Maryland. The oldest four children are all married and live about 25 miles away, and so far have produced a total of 17 grandchildren and step-grandchildren - so there will always be plenty of opportunity to continue with children's ministry!
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Ministry development
In 1995 and with their two youngest children, they spent 9 months at King's Way Missionary Institute in McAllen, TX, learning Spanish and being prepared for full-time missionary work. They then spent over 6 years as full-time missionaries in Mexico, living and ministering first in rural Veracruz (with both Nahuatl Indian and Mexican churches), then in Nuevo León, where they developed their base as a center for ministry and evangelism in the form of a Christian café. They also traveled extensively from Chihuahua to Cozumel preaching and teaching seminars for children’s ministry, while writing and producing a number of materials including teaching books, tracts and bible games in both Spanish and English.
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World outreach
The ministry became incorporated in 2000, and in October of 2002, Gerald and Shirley returned to their home in Texas to establish the ministry base there, with a view to extending into other countries around the world. As they developed their website, the Lord started to connect them with many people overseas with similar ministry vision, and the ministry developed into new areas as doors opened to travel and minister in Cuba, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, the UK, Egypt, and Kenya. During 2006 they began to develop more resources (especially for children's ministry) that can be shared via e-mail and the Internet, and so now their teaching materials are being used in more than 20 countries, and in some 6 continents around the world. Back to top
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