Early History

I entered the world in Washington DC, in August of 1957, the first of two children born to my parents. Deciding that "Baby Boy Penning" was too unoriginal, my parents named me William Roy. When I was a year and a half old we packed up and moved to Hawaii; my dad being in the military and having received a new assignment. (Actually, he had requested service in Alaska, but for reasons known only to Army logic he was sent to the Island State instead.) I had my second birthday while there.

Six  months later, Dad decided that 23 years in military service was enough, and he retired. We moved to northern Indiana, near my mom's parents, where my sister was born in November of 1960. We stayed on in the Hoosier state for few more years, then Dad decided that he had had enough of city life and moved the family to northern Wisconsin, where I grew up.

Life in Eagle River, Wisconsin, was definitely backwater at the time. While most of the U.S. enjoyed dial telephones, three TV networks and shopping malls (hey, this was the '60s, remember?), we still had the privilege of giving the operator the number we were calling ("Number, please!" "3-1-3-J" "Thank you!"), and could only pick up CBS (so I missed a number of famous shows from that era that were on other networks). When my bicycle broke down we had to travel a hundred miles to find a repair shop. Eventually, though, civilization caught up. Dial telephones were introduced (I can still remember making my first dial-call!). ABC and NBC built stations (although the NBC broadcast tower was knocked down by 3 drunks in an airplane in a snowstorm after less than a year of operation and had to be rebuilt). And more commerce came.

Did I say "backwater"? Yes I did. But as I grew up I came to love the "backwater" life. When I went away to college one of the hardest things to adjust to was living in a city. After Eagle River's population of 1326, even a small city like West Lafayette, Indiana seemed huge. And the university itself had more than 20 times the population of the town I grew up in. Talk about a change…

So maybe that explains why even today I love the country and really don't care much for city life. And I guess I'll always be that way.

Education

Elementary and high school were always easy for me. I'm sorry if that steps on your toes if you're one of the people who had to struggle, but it's the truth. Another truth is that I could have gotten better grades if I'd tried, but like any normal kid, I hated school. I hated studying. I hated homework. And I was drawn to the usual types of misbehavior that most boys gravitate toward. In high school I even got in trouble with the law for one stupid prank. I finished on probation. Then came college.

I think my parents had figured out long before I did that I would end up studying science. Some kind of science. I had always enjoyed playing around with electronics. I loved reading (and watching!) science fiction (see the section on Roy W. Penn Science Fiction). I used to play Star Trek with a neighbor boy (you guessed it, I was always Spock). So when I headed off to Purdue University to study Physics, nobody was surprised.

By the time my four years at Purdue were done I was still not ready to enter the "real" world. So I did what most of my fellow physics students did to put off that horror and entered graduate school, this time at the University of Arizona in Tucson, to study Astronomy.

Somewhere along the line I discovered something. I really enjoy science and the pursuit of knowledge, but quite frankly I ended up not caring a whole lot for the life of the professional scientist. It wasn't money. It was the idea of having to work 18 hours a day, 7 days a week in order to simply make it. Maybe I'm strange, but I want a life.

Also, along that long and often bumpy road (I had found college to be much, much more difficult than high school!) I had been introduced to computers. I found them fascinating. They only do what you (or someone else!) tell them to do, and while complex they are also very popular and useful. All of a sudden I found something that I not only enjoyed, but that didn't consume my entire life just to make a living. So when I finished graduate school (complete with Post hole Digger), instead of rushing off to some institute of even higher learning I went into computer support work, basically working as a private consultant. And it was during this phase of my life that I ended up taking the step that eventually led to my work here in Brazil.

Wycliffe

In the mid '70's I had come to discover that belief in God (specifically, belief in Jesus Christ) wasn't just a ritual of going to church on Sunday mornings and sitting through a mish-mash of dreary sermons and other rigmarole. (See God, the Bible and Christianity for more about this milestone in my life.) This discovery impacted my life in numerous ways, including, of course, what I would spend the rest of my life doing.

I had entered college with one purpose: to learn how to be a scientist so that I could study the universe (or at least some part of it) and learn how it worked. Along the way, as you read in the previous section, I learned that while science is fascinating (and I still find it so), the life of the professional scientist left much to be desired. (I still shudder when I think of one professor I knew in graduate school; his life consisted of astronomy and drinking German beer.) One of the things I found lacking was purpose. More and more, I envisioned myself someday standing before God, and when He asked what I did with my life I would tell Him all about some star up there in the sky, and He would reply that He already knew all about that star, thank you very much, but what did I do about all the people on Earth living and dying without knowing about His Son?

In the late '80's a fellow from my Sunday school began dating a woman from the class. Now I had known for a while that this fellow was a member of something called Wycliffe Bible Translators, but I had never bothered to inquire further. Well, as he and the woman began to get serious, she decided that she wanted to join him in Wycliffe, and so went off to an orientation program to learn more about the organization. Every week, we in the class would receive updates. The more I heard, the more I began to get interested myself.

Finally, one evening I "just happened" to ask the fellow if Wycliffe had any need for people working with computers. I had expected a sort of noncommittal response, so I was quite surprised when he turned to me and gave me an enthusiastic "Yes!". One thing led to another, and less than a year later I was off to Wycliffe's orientation program myself.

After finishing the program and going on to further training, both in Linguistics and computer skills, I ended up being assigned to work in Brazil. I arrived in early February of 1992 and spent most of the next year learning Portuguese. After language school, I returned to the States for a year until I could get another visa, after which I came back to Brazil and began work at the translation center in Porto Velho. Eventually I was moved to the other major center in Cuiabá, where I currently work and reside.

For more details about what I do, see Billiard's Work.

For details about where I am right now and what I am doing, see Current Billiard.