Bev DeSalvo was born in a small town in Louisiana and attended Louisiana State University where she majored in education. After marrying her college sweetheart, Gary, she taught elementary school in Dallas, Texas while Gary attended Dallas Theological Seminary. After seminary, Bev and Gary moved to Temple, Texas where Gary was the senior pastor of Temple Bible Church for 38 years until he passed away in August 2019 after a six-year battle with Ocular Melanoma. By God’s grace, they were privileged to watch TBC grow from 40 people to over 3000 during this time. Bev was the Director of Women's Ministries at Temple Bible Church for six years and a former corporate chaplain for Market Place Ministries. She has taught Bible studies and spoken at women's conferences and in prisons in the U.S. and internationally, in countries as diverse as Brazil, France, Republic of Georgia, Ukraine, Romania, Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya and South Africa. Bev describes herself as a worshiping woman who has experienced the healing comfort of God’s presence in the good times and bad on the broken road of life. Raised in an abusive home that created a deep fear of intimacy, God has used her pain as a magnet to draw her to His heart. In this safe place, she is now finding healing, yet again. Believing that God can use her pain to encourage others, she takes this message of hope to hurting women all over the world. Her book, Return to Joy, published by NavPress, has been taught in churches and prisons in the US and Ukraine. Presently, there is a group of 50 women in war-torn Ukraine studying the Russian translation. Bev now resides in College Station, Texas where she enjoys spending time with her two adult children and their families. Having felt called to ministry as a teen even though she wasn’t raised in a Christian home, her ministry looks far different than she planned for this season of life. She currently leads GriefShare at Grace Bible Church, and a Hope Gathering group for widows, as well as mentoring women one on one. She finds this life giving and hopes to spend the rest of her days on earth as a light in this dark, broken world in her new calling- being a shepherdess, reflecting God’s healing love to the wounded sheep He brings her way.