My name is John William Barnard, and my wife is Kimmie. We’re both from Florida; we met in 2014, and we were married in 2016. A few months later, we moved to New Hampshire so that I could complete a master’s in linguistics.
In 2013, I tried to find a job in Québec, but without success. I went back to Florida, discouraged and confused, because I was certain that God wanted me to be a missionary there. At the same time, Kimmie came back to the same town from Atlanta to take a position as a French teacher, while I was working as an English teacher at a local university. Neither of us knew exactly why we had come back to where we had grown up. But through our sisters, we met each other that fall. What at first seemed to be one of my greatest disappointments became one of my greatest blessings, since I had finally met the partner in mission work that God had been saving for me.
A few months after getting married, we moved to New Hampshire. Even though I had applied to several universities in the U.S., God confirmed that he wanted us to be missionaries in Québec by giving us a full scholarship to the University of New Hampshire, even though we had not applied for one. We have been able to go regularly on trips to Québec to worship with other Christians and take part in mission projects.