TLTF Leadership
Franco Bottley is a graduate of Saint Leo University and has been researching and teaching the Bible for more than 20 years. He has extensive training in Christian Counseling and teaches in-depth biblical studies twice weekly in his home. Two passions have directed his life and ministry: an unwavering commitment to the rightly divided Word of God and seeing lives transformed by God’s grace and love. His passion models the contagious joy that springs from enthusiastically following after Jesus Christ. He is a dedicated and devoted father of two beautiful children. His hobbies include performing in musical theatre, riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle, mountain climbing, canyoneering, snow skiing, and traveling. He is a Graphic Artist by trade and owns his own design studio in Altamonte Springs, Florida.
Paul Knopf has studied the Bible for the greater portion of his life. Raised Jewish, Paul attended Hebrew School in the afternoons after regular school until his Bar Mitzvah at age 13. He became a Christian at age 14 and very shortly thereafter began his biblical studies, which culminated in his graduating from a Christian college. In the late 1980s he was the Country Coordinator in South Africa for a Christian ministry. Professionally, Paul has worked in the computer software industry for more than 25 years in various technical, managerial, and executive roles. His most recent title was Vice-President of Technology Americas for a global public software company, in which he co-ran operations in the Americas region. He has in-depth manufacturing and supply chain experience, as his company provided such software to many clients, including numerous Fortune 500 companies. Paul has traveled extensively, often exceeding 200 flights a year, and has lived outside the USA for approximately 14 years, mostly in Africa, with a year in South America. His background allows him to bring a seasoned international perspective to our ministry. Paul has been married to his wife, Christine, for 22 wonderful years (and counting) They have a son, Shane (19), and daughter, Jessica (16). His favorite hobbies include scuba diving, snow skiing, and hiking.
Robert Witt was a third-generation atheist until 1981, when God rescued him from the brink of suicide and he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Nine months later he served one year of missionary work in a Christian outreach program in Boise, Idaho, where he met and eventually married his dear wife, Debbie, who was involved in the same program. They have been married for 26 years, and for the better part of that time have run a fellowship in their home in Austin, Texas. They have two sons: Travis (24) and Kendric (22), and just welcomed a new daughter-in-law, Anahit, into the family via Travis. Most of his work has been in a supervisory capacity in facilities maintenance, particularly high-rise commercial buildings, and he is currently the director of maintenance and housekeeping at a 29-story dormitory/mall on the University of Texas campus. He says: “I am blessed to have been asked to serve as a Trustee of TLTF, and I look forward to what God has in store for this new ministry.
John A. Lynn, although he passes for a youthful 55 and is often “carded” when claiming his Senior discounts, John was actually born on November 10, 1943, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is still “growing up,” but he got progressively taller in Indianapolis until graduating from prep school in 1961.
Faced with the alternatives of military service, college, work, or starvation, he chose Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and, despite sporadic attendance in class, escaped with a B.A. in Economics in 1965, much to the chagrin of his professors, several of whom burned their PhD diplomas in protest. John did earn nine varsity letters in baseball, basketball, and football at Kenyon, and would have had more but for the fact there was no letter given for throwing water bags off the fraternity roof.
Shortly after graduating from Kenyon, John enlisted in the Army (ours) and went to Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. By the grace of God he was commissioned in a non-Infantry branch and was not sent to Viet Nam as the rifle platoon leader he had been trained to be. Instead, he became the Sports Officer for the 82d Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, where he served his two-year tour of duty before being discharged as a First Lieutenant. He still wonders why he jumped out of perfectly good airplanes, but someone had to bring the volleyballs.
John had planned to work in the front office for the Los Angeles Dodgers after his military service, but during his Army stint he developed a passion for the Lord Jesus Christ and the Word of God. From 1968 until 1987, he served as a minister in a worldwide Christian ministry, where he held a number of key leadership positions, including a five-year stint as the CEO at their college in Kansas.
Since then he has been the point man in founding two other ministries, Christian Educational Services (now Spirit & Truth Fellowship International) and, as of January, 2010, The Living Truth Fellowship. In the past 40 years, John has authored or co-authored about a dozen books, and has taught the Word of God for countless hours in all 50 states and on six continents. He can’t wait to get to Antarctica.
Since 2001 John has also taught a 12-hour SAT prep course that is now the most popular such class in Indianapolis. Given that he has no skill but talking (and writing), he is forever grateful to God for dropping in his lap such a golden opportunity to do stand-up comedy for captive audiences of deranged “yutes,” while at the same time providing them with proven strategies to defeat the dreaded test.
Larry Larimer has been a career firefighter since 1973. He spent his first two summers during college fighting wildland fires for the California Department of Forestry in San Diego County, where he spent most of his life. His full-time fire service career began in Santee, California in 1975, where he worked first as a Firefighter, later as a Firefighter/Paramedic, and finally, as a Fire Captain. Larry also worked as a part-time Life Flight Paramedic concurrent with his employment in Santee. Later, he worked for the Federal Fire Department in San Diego as the Assistant Chief of Fire Training and Emergency Medical Services.
He now lives in Camas, Washington, where he is employed as a Battalion Chief for the Camas Fire Department. Larry has usually been involved with the training division with each agency he worked for, and still has a passion for teaching, training, coaching, and mentoring.
Larry has been married to his amazing wife, Donna, for more than 37 years, and they have two married sons, Jesse (a 28-year old Chiropractor) and Tyson (a 26-year old pre-law student) who live in the nearby community. Their family is very closely knit, and they have lots of fun together.
Larry was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church shortly after his birth in 1953. Never being the type to “just take it on faith” as a sufficient explanation of God’s magnificent Word, Larry was not successful continuing in the Catholic tradition. Intrigued instead by science, Larry studied evolution, natural selection, and other “rational” explanations for our existence. Never one to equivocate, he proclaimed himself to be “at least agnostic, if not downright atheistic.”
Then, in 1976, Larry heard about a Bible class that purported to present the Bible as a precise work that fit “like a hand in a glove,” which was a radical shift from his don’t-ask-questions religious upbringing. Larry signed up and, with a degree of cynicism, dove into the study. Born again at the end of the class, Larry knew that his new primary mission in life needed to be to help save people from a very different, more permanent fire than the types he had fought previously. He is honored to serve in TLTF and dedicated to the goal that the accurate and perfect Word of God is made readily available to any person willing to hear.
2013 TLTF Elders
- Dave & Sue Carlson – OH
- Ricardo & Socorro Contreras – TX
- Marc and Maria Dickie – FL
- Janis Erickson - MN
- Wayne & Rachel Graf - CA
- Marion Helms - FL
- Bob Keck - IN
- Bob & Linda Maffit - MI
- Rosanne Martino - NY
- Jim Murray - IN
- Harley & Deb Palmbos - TX
- Larry Ramberg - IL
- Gregory & Linda Rogers - IN
- Ken & Janet Schleimer - AZ
- Gary Smith - OR
- Jon & Christine Touchstone - FL
- Bob & Alana Wassung – CT
- Pat and Cynthia Wolf - TX
- Rick & Jeannie Zedan - AZ
