Hodges, Tom & Irene

Tom and Irene Hodges serve in Bible Translation technology. Following 14 years in Europe and 18 at HQ, Tom devoted ten of his 53 years of missionary service to the JAARS Center in North Carolina. As a research assistant, computer programmer, and tester, he helped develop software tools for translators worldwide. Following heart problems, he continues to work from home on speech analysis research and testing to help speed Bible translation.

Personal witnessing everywhere is Tom’s delight, often using his tract to start conversations: ‘Atheist Engineer’s Flight Towards Suicide’. It’s currently in its 12^th printing. The tract carries a link to a free e-book of his testimony about how he, a former; 11-year atheist, found Christ and was called into missionary service: ‘Atheist Engineer Finds God’s Real!. 

Chapter 6 should be an encouragement to prospective missionary trainees because it relates how God undertook in a mighty way to provide the answer to their biggest obstacle to becoming missionaries; “Who would want to support us”?

Tom met Irene when she almost ran over him at a church in California where Tom, an atheist on the verge of suicide at the time, had come just to ask questions. They’ve been married for over 57 years.

Irene served her first year in Admin at the JAARS Center. She has been keyboarding Bible manuscripts through Mission Assist, U.K. over the past 20 years. Her keyboarding includes a host of linguistic and phonetic codes. Some of the manuscripts have even been hand-written! Currently she is inputting the Romanized Cantonese Bible, with a potential 72 million readers, her 86^th Bible.