Although Christine Carr is a year shy of meeting the requirements for a doctorate in education from the University of Maryland, she already has gained major points in courage, charity and compassion through her work with children in Central America.

In the early 1970s, Ted Fletcher met people from all over the world in his travels as national sales manager for the Wall Street Journal. That experience so fed his desire to share his faith with people from other cultures that Fletcher, then 42, resigned from the Journal to pursue his dream of full-time missionary work.

Dave and Suzy Belt do not have electrifying tales of trekking through snake-infested swamps to reach primitive tribes with the gospel. However, through opening their home to a Japanese student attending George Mason University, their influence is being felt halfway around the world.