Gordie was raised in San Diego, California and attended Prairie Bible College in Alberta, Canada, graduating from there in 1971.  He also met his wife Nancy at this Bible college and they were married shortly after graduation in her hometown of Coeur D’Alene.  Following their wedding, Gordie & his wife went on to further training as missionary candidates with New Tribes Mission (now called Ethnos 360) in Ontario, Canada, and then attended the Missions Training Center in Missouri, where they studied linguistics and language/culture acquisition.

After completing three years of missions training, Gordie and his wife left for Paraguay, South America in 1975 as career missionaries.  They served together for the next 40 years working among a small group of indigenous people called the Manjui.  While working among this people, Gordie turned their spoken language into a written one so that they would be able to read God’s word for themselves.  He and his missionary co-workers also taught the Scriptures and the gospel story while translating those same Scriptures, eventually giving the Manjui people a Bible in their own language.

Gordie & Nancy have 5 children, three of whom were born in Paraguay.  Their two oldest sons are serving in Paraguay as missionaries under Ethnos 360 with their families.  Their other children include a third son and two daughters, who live with their families in Idaho, Delaware, and Massachusetts.

Since retiring as active missionaries in January of 2016, Gordie & Nancy settled in Coeur D’Alene. They spend much of their time visiting their children and their 16 grandchildren and occasionally get to travel back to Paraguay to visit family and their Manjui friends.