Kent spent most of his childhood in Montreal, Quebec but attended the University of Waterloo when his family moved back to Ontario in 1979. He graduated from Waterloo with a Bachelor of Mathematics and a Minor in Computer Science in 1983.

While at university, Kent met Christ through a Navigators group on campus. At the 1984 Urbana Missions Conference, he learned how to use one’s skills to gain access to restricted countries and felt challenged to consider missions. He then enrolled in Ontario Theological Seminary taking courses in the evenings and took his vacation time from work to visit the Silk Road in the summer of 1986. Feeling the burden to reach out to Muslims, Kent moved to a highly Muslim populated area in Toronto and it was then that he started attending Bayview Glen Church where he met Clara.

Clara was born to a British business family in Nairobi, Kenya. Her parents started Youth for Christ in Nairobi. Her father was born to missionary parents, whose 42 years of service were spent in Rwanda and Kenya. When business brought her family to Canada, Clara began attending Bayview Glen Church. She had become a follower of Christ at the age of five in Kenya.

In 1984, while listening to a sermon by Dr. Arnold Cook, Clara felt the specific call of God on her life to dedicate herself to reaching the unreached. In 1985, she attended a short-term mission to Mexico City. She began to prepare to become a teacher with the intention of using her profession to gain access to unreached peoples. Clara graduated from York University in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts and Education.

In 1987 both Kent and Clara attended the Urbana Missions Conference. Once again God used this time to draw Kent back to the Middle East and so in the summer of 1988, Kent took a leave of absence from his job and spent two months there. Meanwhile, Clara went to another part of the Silk Road to work with a mission reaching Arabs.

They were married in June 1990. In December 1990, God opened the doors for them to begin their journey in the Silk Road. Kent and Clara moved to the Middle East in 1991 as international workers and together have three boys, all born and raised in the Middle East. Their passion is to worship God and pray for a disciple-making movement that spreads across the region. Their lives are full with friendship evangelism, reaching out to business friends, neighbours, and friends who have never heard the truth about Christ.