 Steve Youngren, Compassion Connection Director/IBCI Director
Steve was raised in Seattle, Washington. After high school graduation, he served in the Air Force for four years. While serving as a youth pastor, he also attended Northwest Bible College, graduating with a degree in Pastoral Studies. He then served in full time ministry positions including youth pastor, worship leader, choir director, evangelism ministry coordinator, and assistant pastor. Eventually he moved to southern California and became a senior pastor in Palm Desert. After nearly nine years in Palm Desert, he stepped out as a foreign missionary to Mexico where he co-founded “Compassion Connection.” After almost seven years in Tecate and Oaxaca, Mexico, he moved Compassion Connection to Ecuador in order to begin a bible school and leadership training to Ecuadorians.
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 Sandi Youngren, Operations /Potter’s Wheel Facilitator
Raised near Seattle, Washington, Sandi found Christ during the “Jesus Movement” of the seventies and immediately became involved with others on a discipleship journey. For the 30+ years since then, Sandi has been involved in many avenues of service including: raising four children and giving support to her husband in ministry, personally serving as a youth leader, in community outreach, and the leadership of short-term foreign missions ministries. She moved toward a call to foreign missions alongside her husband in 1996 and they co-founded Compassion Connection in Mexico. Sandi now handles stateside communications and administrates several areas for Compassion Connection including the missions and discipleship training school, “Potter’s Wheel.”
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 Justin Spoonamore, Finances/Visitation
Justin was born and raised in Indiana and came to accept faith in God as his own decision in high school. In his junior year of high school, he felt God place a call to foreign missions on his heart. He later followed this call in obedience by serving on a Navajo Indian reservation in Arizona where he and his wife, April, directed a home for abused and neglected children for a year and a half. After this he served in Mexico at Global Frontier Missions while going through missionary training school. Taking what he learned there, he moved to Ecuador in 2008 to join Compassion Connection.
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 April Spoonamore, Community Living Coordinator
April knew she would be a full time missionary early in life. While she was on her first mission trip to Juarez, Mexico she knew that life would never be the same for her again. After graduating from high school, April married Justin and they made the commitment to spend their lives on the mission field together. God first brought them to a Navajo Indian Reservation to run a home for abused and neglected children. After feeling the need for more formal training, April and Justin moved to southern Mexico to be a part of Global Frontier Mission’s missionary training school which provided hands-on ministry experience in a foreign country and focused on church planting among unreached people groups. After completing their school and internship in Oaxaca, Mexico they felt God’s unmistakable leading to become part of Compassion Connection in Ecuador.
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 Amie Youngren, IBCI Administrator/ CC Office Manager
After high school graduation, Amie began to work with children with autism, and was trained by the Center for Autism Related Disorders. She provided behavioral and cognitive home therapy. She has worked with: Lovaas Institute For Early Intervention, Lincoln Institute, San Diego Unified School District, YMCA, and The Institute for Early Education. Interwoven with her heart for children, Amie was eager to share the gospel on the foreign field. She attended YWAM’s Discipleship Training School in India. She stayed on in India and volunteered at Emmanuel Christian School, instituting structure to the behavioral and academic programs. Amie also attended the University of the Nation’s School of Biblical Studies while in India. In 2001 Amie joined her parents, the founders of Compassion Connection. She currently adminstrates and trains national administration for IBCI, the National Bible Institute.
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 Tiffany Butler, IBCI Logistics/ Oral Cultures Research
Tiffany was born in Nevada and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. She spent six years after high school living in Tuscon, Arizona where she earned a degree in massage. She moved to Seattle when she was 25. After a long search for spirituality, she decided to attend Seattle Bible College, and in the second week at SBC she recognized Jesus as the answer and her Lord and Savior. In her third year of Bible college Tiffany joined the internship program which took her to Brazil with Mike and Jodi Bunn of YWAM and then to Ecuador with Steve and Sandi Youngren of Compassion Connection. She returned to Seattle and graduated from SBC with a Bachelors of Theology with a major in Cross-Cultural Missions. After graduation she left for Ecuador to join the Compassion Connection staff.
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 Anthony Lagoon, IT Technician/ Visitation
Anthony is the creative guru that loves to get his hands on anything visual. I guess you could say using any visual means to help those who are helping further the ministry or to promote ministry or evangelistic events.
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Caylin Lagoon, ESL Ministries
Caylin was born in Southern California and then her family moved to Utah at age 9. She met Anthony at age 14 in youth group. She was also only 14 when she attended Compassion Connection’s “Boot Camp” in Tecate, Mexico and decided to become a missionary. After graduation, Caylin spent several months in Belize working with Machaca Outreach with John & Lisa Gotz before getting married in September of 2005. The Lagoons continued to live in Utah and be involved in various ministries such as worship, youth leaders, Sunday school teachers, and mission’s ministry. Caylin also received her certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language (TSL) during this time. Anthony and Caylin prayed about foreign missions and waited on God for the right timing for almost five years. In May of 2009 they made the long anticipated move to Ecuador to join the staff of Compassion Connection.
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 Noah Brennan
Noah grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and he began to feel the Lord’s leading to cross cultural ministry in high school where he was first exposed to missions in Tecate, Mexico. Noah attended Southwestern Bible College and graduated with a degree in Secondary Education and a minor in English. Immediately after graduation Noah taught at a Christian school in Maui, HI, while his wife, Cate, began work on her degree in Elementary Education. After teaching in Maui for four years, he and his wife moved back to Buffalo, NY so that she could finish her degree and they could seek the Lord’s leading concerning full time foreign ministry. While in Buffalo, Noah worked in an inner-city public school, completed online studies for certification in TESOL (teaching English for Speakers of Other Languages), and led a summer missions team that worked with Compassion Connection. After a short time the Lord began to direct Noah and his wife to full time ministry in Ecuador.
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 Cate Brennan
Cate grew up in Buffalo, NY. She attended a year of Bible school in Phoenix, AZ where God began to place a desire for foreign missions in her heart. It would, however, be another ten years before the door for full time missions would open. She married her husband, Noah, and together they began to seek out opportunities for missions. But before God would place Ecuador in their paths He would stretch them and ground them in His Word. Cate spent the past three years in Buffalo finishing her undergraduate degree in Elementary Education. While finishing school was a main reason for going back to Buffalo the Lord used it as a time to show the importance of the role of His local church and sound doctrine. She is now looking forward to working with Compassion Connection and the Ecuadorian people alongside her husband as they raise their son, Phinehas.
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