Retired Missionaries

Jean Van Diest
BIRTHDAYS
Jeanie: August 14
ANNIVERSARY: June 6
Gale and Jean met while attending Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon. After graduation and marriage, they attended the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Norman, Oklahoma. Gale completed the Missionary Medical course at Biola. They arrived in Alaska in 1954 to begin a church-planting ministry in the Athabascan Indian village of Holikachuk. They served twelve years in Holikachuk and Grayling and then moved to the newly-formed Arctic Bible Institute, where Gale taught and was student advisor. Gale was appointed Alaska field director in 1970 and served as general director from 1987 to 1995. They have five grown children and nineteen grandchildren. Gale passed into Glory in 2022.