Meet TLI Trainers Mike Evans, Larry Szyman, and Stu Dix

Mike Evans, Larry Szyman, and Stu Dix from Training Leaders International have seen firsthand how the Living Stones Pastor Training Center students have been changed through the gospel knowledge they’ve gained, turning from prosperity gospel teachings and developing a better understanding of each book of the Bible.

“I told my guys several times that I really have a deep sense that when I’m training them, I’m training future missionaries to the U.S.,” Mike said. “It’s really a privilege to be with them. I don't think there’s been a single time I’ve been here that I've taught them more than they've taught me.”

The Call

Mike grew up on a farm in Iowa with six siblings, and his parents took the family to church every Sunday. 

“I grew up hearing that I was pretty good, or if I behaved, God would be happy with me. I thought if I compared myself to people that I could pick, I was doing okay, but that obviously changed,” he said.

Mike married his wife, Jill, and they had two children. He got a job selling livestock feed, bought land from his father, and built a home.

“One of my feed customers shared the gospel with me, so that started the battle in my heart that I couldn’t put away. He told me all men are lost without Christ. That didn’t fit with being a good boy, so I couldn’t put those things together,” Mike said.

In March of 1979, a tornado came through the area and flattened Mike’s home. He and his family were picking up the pieces and trying to figure out what to do next when their daughter, Jasmin, contracted a cough. Mike and Jill took Jasmin to the hospital and learned their daughter had terminal cystic fibrosis. The doctors said she might live to the age of 21 or she might pass away in a few days.

Ten days after the diagnosis, which was 40 days after the tornado destroyed their home, Jasmin went to be with the Lord.

“I was devasted. When it came time for the funeral, I knelt beside my daughter’s casket and that’s where God changed my life. Kneeling beside her grave, I experienced God transforming death to life. Everything was different. My life totally changed that day. One of the things that I started to pray early on was for God to use me in as powerful a way as He used her, and I’ve never caught up,” Mike smiled with tears in his eyes.

His son grew up as an only child, and after he graduated high school, Mike and Jill adopted their niece’s daughter.

Mike and Jill shared their testimony with relatives, friends, and church members. Their pastor then asked Mike to start working with the youth. His boss, who was also a Christian, allowed Mike to study during the day to teach the youth as long as he sold his quota of livestock feed. Eventually, Mike and four other families started meeting on Sundays on their own, and through that, God raised up a church.

About a year later, Mike was encouraged to prepare for ministry and moved to Chicago to attend Moody Bible Institute of Chicago. After graduating and pastoring a church for about eight years, his marriage was strained, and he realized the only way he could love his wife like Christ loves the church was to step back from his pastoral leadership role. He began working for Slavic Gospel Association and stayed there for about seven years. Next, he led a session of church planters in Moldova.

“God convinced me by the time that was over that I was supposed to come back and plant a church, so I came back with Jill and talked about church planting. She’d never been in favor of it because of the pain that came up from my foolishness in pastoring,” Mike said. “I told her I thought God wanted me to plant a church. She looked at me and said, ‘I think it’s time.’”

They began searching for a group that held the same values and prayed for God to show them the community where they could establish a church. God led them to New Richmond, Wisconsin, and they launched Faith Community Church in 1997. Mike pastored this church for 20 years. This was the first daughter church of Faith Community Church of Hudson, Wisconsin, where Larry Szyman served. 

Larry grew up in a Catholic family on the south side of Chicago, and he was the sixth born of eight children. He attended a parochial school until eighth grade when his family moved to Minnesota. He graduated from high school and attended the University of Minnesota Duluth.

“I had a crisis and got dumped by a girl. I found myself reeling a bit, and during this time, I observed my mom who went to a Catholic charismatic retreat in Duluth. She had a noticeable change in her life, so I started asking questions. A few months later, I told her that if she bought me a Bible, I’d start reading it,” Larry said.

Later, Larry found a Bible in his room that his mother gave him, and he started reading it. He got connected to other Christ followers, and shortly afterwards, he gave his life to Jesus. During his junior year of college, he felt called to ministry and told his advisor he wanted to become a pastor. 

He graduated from college and married his wife, Carol, in 1980. They now have three children. Larry worked part time in a church for three years then went to seminary at Bethel University in St. Paul, Minnesota. From 1985 to 1989, he served as a youth pastor in San Franciso. Over the years, he’s served in various roles in the church including associate pastor and lead pastor. This year, he retired after serving for 33 ½ years at Faith Community Church. 

Through the network of churches in St. Croix Valley that began with Faith Community Church of Hudson, God used Stu Dix to plant the Village Church in Baldwin, Wisconsin, in 2010. Stu served this church for 10 years. He grew up in a family of believers in Wisconsin, and when he reached the age of 16, he attended a youth retreat where he made the decision to follow Jesus. 

Around the end of his college career, he accepted the opportunity to work for a local youth organization called Youth For Christ. After graduating from the University of Sioux Falls in South Dakota, he became the executive director of the Youth For Christ group in Wisconsin. For three years while Stu was on the staff with this ministry, he constantly thought the church should be doing work like this evangelical group.

“That just gnawed at me for three years, and finally a pastor said, ‘Well, you better go try to find the answer to your question.’ So, I went from Youth For Christ to an internship at a church. Then from there I went to Fuller Theological Divinity School in Pasadena, California,” Stu said.

After completing his studies there, he returned to Wisconsin and pastored a church for 20 years, before planting The Village Church in 2010. Stu has been married to his wife, Cheryl, for 42 years, and they have three children. 

TLI and FCM Partnership 

Training Leaders International invited Mike to join their staff in 2017 after he retired from pastoring Faith Community Church. Stu and Larry also connected with TLI through a lead team project.

Mike was sent to assess the potential of planting churches in Uganda and discovered there was a need for training first, so he connected with a staff member of TLI to create a three-year plan to begin training in Gulu, Uganda. During the first three-year cohort, Mike, Larry, and Stu learned a lot through trial and error. 

“Yet God did amazing things in that first cohort. We don’t want to take anything away from that,” Stu said. “People who couldn’t read, they came to the pastor training and are able now to preach biblical sermons. It was amazing how much they grew and their passion for planting churches was amazing. So, we praise God for all that, just as He willed it to be.”

Towards the end of that first cohort, God connected TLI with Four Corners during a gospel coalition conference. FCM was also searching for a curriculum for the Living Stones Pastor Training Center.

“We came to the conclusion that there were three needs that we saw halfway through the first cohort. We needed to get the right people to the table, we needed a solid local partner, and we needed someone to pay attention to these people between visits. Four Corners represented all of that,” Larry said.

TLI and FCM began the recruiting process for the next cohort, which would be held at Abaana’s Hope. Potential students were interviewed and TLI held a tester event. Through God’s grace, everything fell into place, and TLI committed to a three-year cohort at Abaana’s Hope through the PTC. This cohort was comprised of 48 men from 9 different tribes. 

One training night during this cohort, the men received word that there was a tribal attack north of Abaana’s Hope. Men from the Madi tribe were frightened because they had to travel that way to get home. The Acholi told the Madi how to get to their place and bypass the trouble zone.

“The Madi and Acholi have never gotten along. They’ve always been fighting, but we had Acholi and Madi praying for each other here together before sending those guys home. You got to see the Kingdom,” Mike said.

After graduation in September 2022, Mike thought it would be his last trip to Africa, since they had trained Ugandans to become trainers for the next cohort, however, God had something else in mind. Mike received a phone call and was told that the PTC had recruited not just one, but two cohorts for the next three-year training period, which included 81 men. The Ugandan PTC graduates who are now trainers told Mike they could teach one cohort but asked the TLI team to return to teach the second. Mike, Larry, and Stu agreed to return.

At most TLI training sites, the trainers rotate every session, but Mike, Larry, and Stu have had the opportunity to return to Abaana’s Hope multiple times over the course of six years. Mike has been to Uganda 22 times, Larry has been 18 times, and Stu has been to Africa 17 times. They’ve grown deep relationships with the students and are inspired by their eagerness to learn, their devotion to Christ, and their intelligence. The majority of the students speak more than two languages. A student in Larry’s class this cohort speaks nine languages plus additional dialects.

“We approach graduation in September of this year, Lord willing, and I think they can carry on the work,” Mike said. “There are certainly capable men, at least a dozen African leaders. For the first time ever, just a couple months ago, two of the trainers here were sent to Kenya to meet TLI staff to do a training at a site that is likely going to develop in Kenya. We intend to have two Ugandan trainers join TLI staff to do training there through a three-year cohort.” 

Okello Benson, pastor of Living Stones Community Church (LSCC) and a graduate of the PTC, is one of the trainers who went to Kenya. He has seen firsthand the beauty of the gospel being sent out to across Africa.

“Personally, the PTC has changed me and given me confidence in teaching the Bible and handling the Bible with care,” Benson said. “The other impact that we see in PTC is the desire that the local churches are having to be taught God’s Word. Right now, even before we graduate this current cohort, we are receiving so many calls from pastors within the local community… Seeing those who have passed through from the graduation to teach, it’s a praise to God because we are fulfilling what 2 Timothy 2:2 tells us, ‘What you’ve heard from me in the presence of many entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.’”

Vincent Wilobo, who oversees the Abaana’s Hope farm and Women’s Refuge Center, is PTC graduate who is now a PTC trainer and an elder at LSCC. 

“The PTC is another amazing thing the Lord has done. Getting to train pastors and church leaders to equip them with the gospel and equip pastors with how to handle God’s word, that has been one of the biggest things that God has done through Abaana’s Hope,” he said.

Taban Francis, a PTC graduate from South Sudan, fled war and came to Uganda for the safety provided in Adjumani Refugee Camp. After Four Corners Ministries visited the camp to share information about the PTC, Francis felt led to apply for the biblical training. Now he is a PTC trainer.

“One of my motives of coming for the PTC is to change my people. I look back to the nation and I realize people don’t know who God is. That’s why people are fighting among themselves, so learning from God's Word will give me access to speak to them,” Francis said. “When I see more South Sudanese students coming to this training, I feel there will be change in South Sudan. There will be reliable people to change the nation and to take the truth to the people, so it gives me courage. I’m praying that God would continue bringing more, so that the nation will know who He is.”

PTC graduates like Lubangakene Godfrey, Ameku Godfrey, Ekiu Daniel, Olara Sunday, Onen Edwin, Aggrey Ongaya, Moses, and many others are part of the network training men and spreading the gospel.

“It’s possible that the PTC can become an African hub of trainers,” Larry said.

“Which is the mission statement for the PTC – an abiding network of gospel-centered, Bible-saturated, African-led churches,” Stu added. “This is now a group of men who are going to launch a movement that, I would say, could probably impact the gospel preaching and Bible teaching of every pastor in northern Uganda.”

After PTC graduation in September 2025, Mike, Larry, and Stu will pass the training baton over to the African leaders.

“God’s got this here,” Larry said.