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About the Roughton Family - missionaries to Alaska

Birthdays:
Bart - 2/16
Cheryl - 4/18
Jenna - 8/1
Bryan - 8/15
Erin - 9/2
Rachel - 3/1
Nathan - 6/2

Anniversary - 12/31/83

Bart's Testimony of Salvation

My name is Bart Roughton, and my wife Cheryl and I have been married for twenty-two years. We have six children and four grandchildren, where does the time go? I was saved and baptized in 1974 at the age of eleven in a Baptist church in Dearborn, MO. I can remember the Holy Spirit working on my heart for several services before I went to the altar. I remember my hands on the back of the pews and my knuckles turning white as I held on to it, all the time knowing what I had to do. Finally, I knew that I must go forward and talk to the preacher, I wanted to be saved. He spoke with me and we prayed, I asked Jesus to save me from my sins and come into my heart. I thank God for that day. Unfortunately, it really wasn't until I started attending Calvary Baptist Church in January of 1997 that I was able to begin to see that there was more to being a Christian than just being saved. There have been years lost between when I was saved and when I stopped long enough to listen to what God had for my life that could have been used to serve Him better. I thank Him for His patience and mercy; I want only to do His will as I take the Gospel to villages in Alaska.

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Cheryl's Testimony of Salvation

My name is Cheryl Roughton and my husband, Bart, is a missionary called to Alaska. We have been married for twenty-two years and have six children, as well as four grandchildren. I was saved and baptized in August 1999, after many years of questioning a childhood profession of faith from when I was eleven years old. I grew up without Christian parents, but they sent my brother and I to a Baptist church for Sunday School and yearly Vacation Bible Schools. When moving to Ava, Missouri, from my childhood hometown, my husband and I began attending Calvary Baptist Church, an independent fundamental church. God worked in my and my husband's lives as we grew in our Christian walk and attended the Bible Institute that Bro. Richard Rhoades taught. I am thankful that God continues to work in our lives and look forward to what the Lord has for us as we follow His call to Alaska.

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Bart's Call to Preach

It is amazing to see how and whom God uses to get a hold of men whom he has chosen to preach his Gospel. I am reminded of John 15:16, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain:.." God called me to preach through His Magnificent Word and missions.

When I graduated from high school, I went to pharmacy school and graduated 5 years later with a degree in pharmacy and said to myself I would 'never' go back to school, write another paper, or take another test! The hours were good, the money was good, and everything was comfortable. Since then I've learned never to say 'never'. In December of 1996 my family and I moved to Ava, Missouri, and a man beginning a church up the road from us, Bro. Richard Rhoades, knocked our door and invited us to come. We went a few weeks later. His desire was and is to see people saved and to train men for the ministry, and with that in mind he started a Bible Institute to help reach those goals. The first year he offered it I said no thanks, not for me, but the next year I said yes. I wanted to know more about God and my Bible. Well, through the Institute and His Word, God began to work on my heart and show me that maybe being a pharmacist wasn't all He had for me. Honestly, I was scared to death. I was happy being a pharmacist, I trained to be a pharmacist, I was comfortable being a pharmacist and where I was at. God wouldn't want me to leave that behind, or would He?

The church was also very missions minded, and my wife and I love to have people over to our home. Through Missions Conferences and Mission Sundays, we have been able to have missionaries on deputation stay with us and share, one on one, what God has called them to and how he was meeting their needs. I was struggling with it, probably fighting against it, but through the Institute and missions, I began to sense that perhaps this was what God was calling me to do, to preach, but with missions at the core. I shared with Bro. Rhoades what was going on and he prayed with me and for me. Later, I came across a verse that spoke to my heart and confirmed it for me. Ecclesiastes 2: 11 says, "Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun." Yes we need to provide, to labour, but for me that was in effect saying pharmacy was to become secondary to preaching God's Word. That was in April of 2000 and on April 16, 2000 I shared with the church family that God had indeed called me to preach.

God has allowed me to be involved in some very good experiences that He has used to show me many things about the ministry. He allowed me to help another man from our church that was sent out to begin a work in another town. Being involved from the 'ground up' was exciting and challenging as I was the song leader and helped preach.
After about a year and a half, I came back to our home church and was able to be in the position of Associate Pastor. Again, there were many things to see and learn, things that are a help now and will be in the future. All during this time however, missions was still on my heart.

In our 2005 Mission Conference, we had Bro. Earl Malpass, a missionary pilot in Alaska, come and reported back, which only stirred the desire. Alaska has been on my heart for some time. I once asked a missionary how he knew that the place he was working at was where God wanted him. He gave me some advice that spoke directly to me. He said "When I look at a map of the world, my eyes keep coming back to the same place time after time". I knew just what he meant, and for me that is Alaska. I was able to take a survey trip to Fairbanks and Fort Yukon in December of 2005 with the help of Pastor Duffett at Bible Baptist in Fairbanks. I and others in my family went back in July of 2007 and also in June of 2008. I have met many folks whom will be of a great help now while on deputation as well as when I arrive on the field. There are many villages that still have no gospel presence in them at all. Villages from 30 people up to the hundreds, Eskimo as well as Indian, and can best be described as 'one big dysfunctional family'. Many in the villages suffer from a lack of hope. It is my desire to see that change as we go to take 'The Hope', Jesus Christ, to the souls of Alaskan villages. Our Long-Term goal is to be on the field in the spring of 2010. We want to plant churches and see native men take them over and reach their own.

I ask that you would pray for us as I answer the call to go 'North to Alaska'. We all need prayer partners to lift us up before the throne as we each carry out the ministry that God has given us, and we count each person a blessing that He is allowing us to cross paths with on our journey to Alaska. God bless you and thank you, again, for taking time to consider me as your missionary to Alaska, 'Taking the Son to the Land Of The Midnight Sun'.

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Statement of Faith

  1. We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible Word of God, and that He has preserved it word for word for the English-speaking world in the Authorized King James Bible.
  2. We believe that there is one God, the source, support and end of all things, eternally existent in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
  3. We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death, in His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the Father's right hand, and in His personal pretribulation return for His saints, and premillenial return with His saints at the Revelation.
  4. We believe that man is totally depraved, a sinner both by nature and practice, therefore estranged from God, totally lost and in need of the convicting and regenerating ministry of the Holy Spirit,--a "born-again experience".
  5. We believe in the personality of Satan, in his power and kingdom, in his wiles and in his judgment at the cross, and in his eternal destruction in the Lake of Fire.
  6. We believe in the deity and present ministry of the Holy Spirit; that He convicts the sinner, regenerates the one who believes, indwells, seals, instructs, reproves, and guides the believer, that He fills and controls every life that is wholly yielded to Him.
  7. We believe in the bodily resurrection of the saved unto "Life" and the unsaved unto "Judgment" and everlasting damnation.We believe in a literal heaven and a literal hell.
  8. We believe that salvation is the free gift of God offered to man by His grace and received by repentance and a personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, plus nothing.
  9. We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, not in the organized unity sought by the "ecumenical movement".
  10. We believe in the local church which is a body of baptized believers who come together in obedience of Christ to carry out the dictates of the New Testament.
  11. We believe and practice both ecclesiastical and personal separation on the basis of the Word of God.

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