Verlin and Debbie met at Free Will Baptist Bible College, and were married in 1986. Verlin received his B.A. degrees in Bible, pastoral and missions, and Debbie transferred to Vanderbilt/Peabody College to complete her B.S. in secondary education and English. Throughout the next ten years, the Andersons lived in the Nashville area. Cason, Cara, and Corbin were all born during that period. Verlin worked several different jobs, including sales and hotel management, before starting nursing school in 1991. After getting his B.S.N. degree, he worked as an RN until entering missionary service. Debbie worked as an office manager while Verlin completed nursing studies at Middle Tennessee State University, but then became a stay-at-home mom and home schooled their children.

The Andersons were approved for missionary service by Free Will Baptist International Missions in 1997, after having made a vacation-pay and family-funded short term trip to Cote d'Ivoire in January 1997 to make sure that Debbie's and Cason's asthma difficulties would not be insurmountable. After a subsequent year of seeking ministry partners and raising funds, the family spent 2 months in Colorado receiving Missionary Internship and Community Health Evangelism training as their Nashville home was sold. That was followed by a year of language school in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. After language school, the family spent six months in Brussels, Belgium, for Verlin to attend tropical medicine school. From there the family traveled directly to Cote d'Ivoire, arriving on the field in July, 2000.

For the next two years the Andersons lived in Cote d'Ivoire without difficulty, learning the culture and becoming acquainted with the challenges of living in Africa. In September, 2002, however, Cote d'Ivoire suffered a country-splitting coup attempt. War broke out, and all FWB personnel were evacuated from the country. It was almost time for the Anderson's furlough anyway, so the family spent the next year and a half in the United States.

The family still felt called to Cote d'Ivoire though, and as the situation in the country stabilized, they requested to return. Permission by the mission was granted in May 2004. The situation once again became heated in November of that year, but the family spent a month in adjacent Ghana instead of returning to the U.S. By December the country was calm again and the Andersons slipped back into Cote d'Ivoire. In August 2005 the family was asked to return to the U.S. for a time, but was allowed to go back in February 2006.

Since that time, they have settled down in Bondoukou, Cote d'Ivoire, concentrating on Community Health Evangelism while participating in other ministries on the field. A further refocus of ministry with the Christian Health Service Corps became necessary in 2013. While incongruous with their covenant of faith, Ivorian believers in most affiliated churches anticipate denominational missionaries to focus solely on assisting denominational works. As the Andersons' ministries had grown to where public and Christian groups throughout the country sought equal footing partnerships with them to facilitate Community Health Evangelism (CHE) teams, a separation came to be needed for matters of conscience, if nothing else. As the last FWBIM appointed Free Will Baptist missionaries living in Cote d'Ivoire, it was also time to let the Ivorian Associations of FWB believers to grow by choice in experience rather than led along to adopt ministry changes via forms of compulsion or obligation. The integration of Disciple Making Movement activities with ongoing CHE growth has resulted in these latter years of ministry that we are seeing established today what is beyond what we'd asked or hoped of God in coming to Cote d'Ivoire as a family.