After twenty years in the Marine Corps, Rod Buckham worked as a project manager in the areas of defense and healthcare. During that time God began to place in his heart a “still small voice of desire” to be involved in kingdom work that produced eternal results versus the temporal work that resulted in shipboard radios and medical devices.
In 2015 Rod and Ruth learned that Wycliffe Associates was using a new methodology to train indigenous people to translate Scripture into their mother tongue. In 2016 Rod participated as a volunteer in several workshops and was able to experience the joy of seeing those who previously had no Scripture in their own language – hold it in their own hands and read from it with their own heart language.
The desire that God began to grow in his heart those days was confirmed and in January 2017 Rod accepted a full time, faith supported staff position with WA. He is presently serving as a program manager within the Domestic Gateway Language Program. Five language teams under his leadership provide open-source resources for the translation work and growth of the indigenous church overseas.
With Ruth’s perspective of a “missionary kid” whose parents were trained and deployed as Bible translators, she is engaged prayerfully and administratively to support Rod while fulfilling her own calling to family and church.