At fifteen, young, dedicated Christ-follower Loreen Ittermann prayed, “God, please don’t give me a boring life!” As one follows Loreen’s life story and reads her personal missionary accounts, this yielded life to God has been anything but boring. God took a quiet, shy girl and created a keen intellect and strong faith within her to become a professor, dean, and missionary. Through these varied roles, her bold witness for Christ is evident. Dr. Ittermann’s contributions to the early phases of the growing Christian school movement paved the way for teaching, training, and disciplining a myriad of believers who, in turn, have taken the Gospel to unreached regions of the world. Loreen was born in Chicago, Illinois, on September 2, 1936, as the firstborn of three daughters to godly parents Dr. Arthur and Lilah Fleck Ittermann. Loreen and her two sisters, Jocelyn and Gwendolyn, have joined Christian work. Her father pastored churches in the Dakotas and Iowa, always leading his congregations toward missions. Loreen’s mother was her father’s faithful companion for seventy-three years. Her father served on the board of Titus International and actively supported Loreen’s ministry. He lived to be one hundred-six years, faithfully serving the Lord until the end. Loreen accepted Christ as her Savior at seven, and her parents and Sunday school teacher became her role models. At nine, she was challenged to read ten verses daily in the Bible and recalls only missing one night. This hunger and thirst for the Word of God became foundational in her life and ministry. Loreen will tell you she always wanted to be a missionary in Africa. Jokingly, she states, “God sent me to the cold countries of Ukraine and Moldova instead.” Looking back, she knows her upbringing in cold environments prepared her for future missionary endeavors in Ukraine and Moldova. She states, “Even the foliage in Moldova and Ukraine reminded me of my childhood.” After graduating from Westmar College in LeMars, Iowa, in 1957, Loreen completed her master’s degree in administration at the University of Tennessee of Chattanooga. During this time, she taught in an elementary school and held Bible clubs on Saturdays. While working on her doctorate at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and supervising student teachers, her dissertation became the impetus for future speaking and workshops. She not only presented and defended the topic of “Jesus as a Master Teacher” in a secular university but found fulfillment in boldly presenting the truth to her dissertation committee, other professors, and graduate students. Following her doctoral degree, Dr. Loreen Ittermann moved to Miami, Florida, to teach and become the first principal of Mueller Christian Academy, a school started by Dr. Charles Stanley. This endeavor lasted eight years. Reliance on God and His faithfulness dominated life at this Christian school. It was here she learned valuable lessons regarding living by faith in God to provide for all provisions as a preparation for future mission work. From 1975 to 1993, Dr. Loreen served as the Dean of Education at Tennessee Temple University, the Dean of Elementary/Early Childhood at Liberty University, and the Associate Dean of Education at Columbia Bible College, now known as Columbia International University. Dr. Ittermann’s research topics and international speaking helped stem some of the tide of the New Age Movement in public school curricula and the opposition to homeschooling. Loreen took her sabbatical from the university for one year to teach children and youth affected by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster brought into Odessa, Ukraine. With two graduate students, the following year was spent in ministry, creatively sharing the Gospel with four thousand children and youth, ages nine to seventeen. They distributed Bibles, tracts, and Gospel bracelets to help them begin their spiritual journey and to share the Gospel with their friends when they returned home. After the year was up and the government had run out of money to bring these children to Odessa from all over Ukraine, Loreen felt God was leading her to remain in this part of the world. She went to the eastern part of Moldova [Transnistria] for a year. There, she taught Bible in a communist university and government public schools and trained Sunday school teachers since, under Communism, no one under nineteen was allowed to attend church. Near the end of that year, the KGB conjectured Loreen was an American spy planning to take over the land! She was interrogated and ordered to leave. God had everything planned. A Bible college had just been established in the western part of Moldova. It was not as rigid as Transnistria, and the administration needed someone as qualified as Loreen to teach some classes. Since none of the churches in that area had any curriculum for teaching Sunday school, Loreen and her student assistants wrote fifty Bible lessons and provided all the materials needed. She also started a Teacher Training Institute for prospective Sunday school teachers. Observing that after graduation from the Bible College, the young men who felt called to begin churches had no support and would need to work full-time to take care of personal needs, Loreen returned to America and challenged the churches to help support these young men so they could plant churches and concentrate on their ministry rather than work a secular job. The Americans were generous and willing to help. To this day, everyone is still praising God. Now, at eighty-seven years old, Dr. Ittermann serves as the Director of National Leaders in Moldova, Russia, Ukraine, Arctic Circle, and closed countries as the national team of pastors, missionaries, and other full-time workers reach Jews, Muslims, Russian Orthodox, atheists, taxi drivers, orphans, prisoners, widows, and disabled. All are very grateful for the generosity of donors who spread the Gospel from as far north as the Arctic Circle, as far east as Siberia, as far west as Western countries, and as far south as Africa. May God be glorified forever more! It’s all because of Him.Read more about this authorRead less about this author