I grew up in Massillon, Ohio and Cudahy, Wisconsin (a Milwaukee suburb), where my father Andrew served congregations of the Slovak Evangelical Lutheran Church. In Junior High School I began studying Spanish and by the time I went to college at Concordia College, River Forest, Illinois, I was fluent in the language. There I majored in Philosophy and minored in Music. For four summers I also served as Coordinator of the Hispanic Ministry Workshop, which the College offered for people of Anglo background going into Hispanic ministry.

After meeting my wife Alicia at the College in 1979 while she was studying English there, we were married in 1980, following my graduation.  I studied Seminary at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri, doing my year of vicarage (internship) both at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Mexico City and at Iglesia Luterana La Santísima Trinidad in San Antonio, Texas. Upon graduating from seminary, I was called by the Board for Mission Services of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod to work with Lutheran churches in Mexico in several support areas, particularly leadership formation, and continued in that position until 1999.

In 1996, I finished a PhD in Systematic Theology at King’s College/University of London in England, where I worked under Prof. Colin Gunton. My area of research was atonement theology. Since 1996, I have been serving as a professor at the Theological Community of Mexico, teaching primarily theology and Biblical studies (see my CV). After joining the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 2000, I was called to serve as Dean of the Theological Community, an ecumenical consortium of seminaries in Mexico City. I also was chosen to head Augsburg Lutheran Seminary, part of the Theological Community, when it reopened in 1998. I served as Dean of the Theological Community until 2004 and since then have continued to teach at the Theological Community as well as the Lutheran Seminary. I have also been active in the pastoral ministry at the Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Mexico City, preaching there regularly and serving in other capacities.

My wife Alicia is a teacher, and we have two children, Elizabeth (married to Matthew Fry) and Monica. Both of our daughters are currently studying in the U.S.