I did not grow up religious and never set foot in any religious building until I was 18 years old. At that time, while isolated as a shepherd in the Swiss Alps, I accidentally discovered a Bible (I had never seen one before!). As I began reading it on my own, I became fascinated with the Gospels and fell in love with Jesus. A few months later, when I came down from the mountains, I found a group of traveling Gypsies who baptized me. After talking with them, I knew I wanted to proclaim Jesus to all the nations of the earth!
Since 1983, for over 40 years, I have been planting and strenghtening churches all over the world.
Some churches grew rapidly, with hundreds of members, while others were smaller, with 50 to 100 people. In some places, I stayed just a few months, but in most, I spent an average of about five years.
My journey has taken me to well-known cities like Geneva, Boston, Paris, Berlin, Zurich, Vancouver, Odessa, and Jerusalem, as well as lesser-known places like Wroclaw in Poland; Irkutsk on the beautiful Baikal Lake near Mongolia; Gorno-Altaisk near the mountainous border of China; Barnaul in the cold plains of central Siberia; Voronezh in the heart of Western Russia; and several cities in Israel, including Nazareth, Rishon Letzion, Ashkelon, and Beersheba.
In all of this, I have been driven by the passion to restore the early church model, aiming to better reflect Jesus and change the world. As a result, I have witnessed countless baptisms and miracles of all kinds, while also facing the trials of starting churches and being a foreigner on three different continents and in eight countries.
Due to my ongoing quest for more truth, I have twice lost everything and had to go through two painful “deserts” afterwards. The first time was with a denomination that was once the fastest-growing in the world. As it became increasingly legalistic and sectarian, I chose to leave, letting go of 10 years of my life there. The second time came when I had a radical encounter with the Holy Spirit, which forced me to leave the church I had been part of for eight years. Despite these experiences, I hold no hard feelings toward either group and view those “losses” as valuable parts of my spiritual growth.
My intellectual and professional pursuits are as diverse as my passion for life. I initially studied agriculture and worked in that field for a few years before majoring in painting and history of art in Geneva. I later studied geopolitics at the Sorbonne in Paris and eventually worked a few years in business. I earned a BA in linguistics from Russia, becoming fluent in half a dozen languages.
Later, I completed a master’s degree in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary in California.
My spiritual gifts include leadership, healing, and prophecy.
I was born and raised in Geneva, making me Swiss, with a German mother and a Swiss French father. While changing planes, I met my Russian wife, Anna, in an airport. I immediately fell in love with her and three months later, on November 6, 1994, we were married! She grew up in the Soviet Union and, like many Russian Jews of that time, had never attended a synagogue or read the Bible. In 1991, after just two weeks of translating Bible lessons for American missionaries, she became convinced about her Messiah and was baptized.
Our two American sons are believers and work in North America, one in the film industry and the other in politics.
In 2019, we made Aliyah to Israel, becoming Israeli citizens. We have started numerous congregations across the Holy Land, encouraging messianic assemblies and teaching nations about restoring the Jewish roots of the early Church.