At Wheaton Walt also found time to attend the Foreign Mission Fellowship meetings. There he began to
learn about missionary work and the need for missionary staff. He began to think of becoming involved
in overseas mission work.
After graduation in 1954, he attended Fort Wayne Bible College, where he took a class in Phonetics and
was challenged by Wycliffe Bible Translators in the areas of descriptive linguistics and cultural
anthropology. He soon became excited about the possibilities of joining the organization as a Bible
translator.
The following summer he attended SIL, the Summer Institute of Linguistic school at the University of
Oklahoma, to be trained as a Bible translator. There, on the tennis court, he met a friendly, vibrant and
energetic student – LaVonne Schreurs.
Vonnie’s grandfather, Theodore Konings’s 600 acre family dairy farm in Cedar Grove, Wisconsin.
(Photo Courtesy of Norman Steinkraus).
LaVonne Jean Schreurs’ growing-up years were not all that different from Walt's. She was born to
Arthur and Nora Schreurs on November 26, 1928, and grew up in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, on the shores
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