By Preston Knight — Daily Staff Writer

MT. JACKSON — David Walker gets up from the dining room table. He's smiling. His wife, Kathy, knows what is about to happen.

"He wants to show you something he got in Cuba," she said.

After a quick trip into the couple's living room, Walker returns with a small paper mache figurine. It's a young Cuban baseball player, wearing a blue jersey and blue cap that has a large brim. The boy's shoes are about three times bigger.

"All over Cuba," Walker said, "kids play baseball."

He knows this and a lot of other things about a lot of other foreign countries from first-hand experience. Walker and his wife of 49 years have traveled to 70 countries, spreading the message of hope and God's love through their nonprofit organization, Bible Missions Inc.

At each stop — Walker, 73, got a head start on his wife, visiting other nations as a child — the couple brings back some sort of momento, many times a picture or craft that winds up on the dining room wall. Several pictures show sad-faced little girls, although one from Haiti has the image of a smiling child.

"There's hope [on] her face, and she's sitting in dirt," said Mrs. Walker, 67. "The pin on her is voodoo."

Walker said: "Pick out a picture and she has a story."

They are all snapshots of the people and places the Walkers have encountered through their mission work, which, since 1992, has been focused on Romania. The couple just returned from there in July as part of a team of 15 volunteers. The Walkers try to travel to Romania twice a year.

The mark the couple has left in their time in Romania has been on churches, orphanages, hospitals, nursing homes, prisons and more. The fact the Walkers make return visits and have become familiar faces has helped the cause, they said.

"They have had so many people come in and make promises [and never come back]," Mrs. Walker said.

If not for the couple's worldly ambitions — they do some domestic mission work, too — Romania would seem to be a far reach for them to have ever visited. The same bad odds could be applied for the chance the Walkers would ever meet.

Walker was born in Phoenix, Ariz., and Mrs. Walker in Maine. She moved to Providence, R.I., and was attending a church where her future husband, who first preached at age 9, was scheduled to speak.

"The pastor said, you're 24, I've got just the girl for you," Walker said.

Mrs. Walker was a farm girl. She had to deal with all of the jokes, too — her maiden name was McDonald.

But Mrs. Walker also participated in as many service organizations as she could, from the Junior Red Cross to 4-H to the Girl Scouts.

"I always felt the need to reach beyond myself," she said.

The man visiting her church, which is referred to as Zion Temple and is the place where Mrs. Walker's grandmother was the first student, had the same outlook on life. Walker said he grew up in a home setting that stressed caring for others.

"I always decided to be a help to the less fortunate, mainly to the children," he said. "Everywhere you see a need you try to work something out."

The Walkers, which have three children and moved to the Shenandoah Valley in 1971, celebrated their 49th wedding anniversary in Romania this year.

The real cause for celebration, however, is when they see the fruits of their impact on Romanians. When the Walkers visited a former Communist prison, where Christians were burned alive and water had been withheld from prisoners, a former guard explained how his life had changed through the power of the gospel.

"That's what keeps us going," Mrs. Walker said. "Changed lives."

Another man, who the couple calls Brother Marin, is a local pastor who the Walkers gave a new car. Through the years, Marin's church has added a bathroom, fence and received funds for paint and more through mission work. He even hosted a feast for volunteers there, an occasion in which all of the church members became waiters and children learned to sing "This Little Light of Mine."

Marin gave Mrs. Walker two porcelain dolls, some of the first momentos she chooses to share a story about.

Romania stood out to the Walkers on their first visit there, which was only meant to be a pass through en route to another spot in eastern Europe. On the streets in downtown Bucharest, there were thousands of Christians singing "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah," after being told for 45 years that there was no God, Mrs. Walker said.

"That was the hook," Walker said.

Mrs. Walker said: "We didn't know how to begin. We started by just helping churches. We started at a little Bible school that had four rooms."

At this point, the couple doesn't know how to stop. They aren't all that interested in finding an answer just yet, either.

"You might call us a miniature Peace Corps with mainly a Christian influence," Walker said.

For more information, contact the Walkers at 477-2810.

* Contact Preston Knight at pknight@nvdaily.com