Open homes brought us here. One home could take us further.

My father and mother met an international friend at a local store and invited him to their home. That single invitation began a journey that has never stopped.

Since 1979 I have been on a journey that has opened my eyes to beautiful people from the nations and taken me — as an “armchair traveler” — to the ends of the earth. The visiting international and my parents became fast friends, as God seemed to knit their hearts together. From that time forward, our eyes began to open as more and more friends from around the world made their way to the United States, and some to Omaha, Nebraska. We thought we could help welcome them. The truth is, meeting these friends has changed our lives forever — for the better.

Through the years, gathered in living rooms across Omaha with international students, I began to notice a pattern: the conversations that mattered most weren’t happening in classrooms. The deep questions were being asked in living rooms, around dinner tables, and after long days.

One by one, students shared their stories — the pressure they felt from home, the culture shock, the loneliness, the weight of expectations, and the spark of purpose beginning to take root in them.

My parents’ ministry became a non-profit called Global Friends. Over the next three decades, alongside wonderful staff and volunteers, we have walked with students from many nations — watching them encounter Christ, be discipled, and several return to their home countries as church planters in places like Japan and all the way to Tibet.

We see our students, scholars, and friends grow in resilience, in wisdom, and in faith. We see them return home or move abroad, stepping into leadership roles with clarity and conviction.

We have never lacked a place to gather. Year after year, God has moved families across Omaha to open their homes: to set another place at the table, to give up an evening, to leave the porch light on for students a long way from their own families.

That provision has been a gift in both directions. Students found people who knew their names. The families who hosted found their own lives widened by friends from the nations. We are grateful for every one of those homes, and we fully expect God to keep providing them.

Alongside the homes God keeps providing, what if Global Friends had one place of its own — a central gathering place, open through the week rather than for an evening?

A sustained, intentional location for international student ministry: one address where students are brought in, built up, and sent out, and where every host family and volunteer already knows the way.

That question is the seed of Global Friends House.