You can contact Vic & Elsie by email at veschlatter@accm.org.

Elsie Conrad grew up in Portland, Oregon in a Christian home, going to a church that was not involved at all in foreign missions. As a teen, her heart was close to God and she would often spend time in her room wondering about her future. Asking God for guidance, He gave her a vision of Jesus standing before, as a Father instructing her child. He was pointing and saying, "Go". Elsie knew she was to be in foreign missions. She asked God three things:
1. To give her a Christian husband and that her children would become Christians.
2. To be a missionary.
3. To be a nurse.
These requests started being answered when her aunt gave her a train ticket to Indiana for her high school graduation present.

They met on the front steps of the Leo, Indiana Apostolic Christian Church-Vic Schlatter was then a junior at Purdue and getting excellent grades in his field of Chemistry and looking forward to a good job with a major company upon graduation. Being a missionary wasn't on his Christmas wish list, but God (with a little help from Elsie) showed him other wise. After they were married and Vic graduated, he took a job as a chemist with General Electric's Hanover nuclear energy plant in Richland, Washington. He and Elsie started a church there and laid it on their hearts to go to a tribal people group who didn't have a Bible in their language to do the translation. In 1961, they left for Papua New Guinea, a small country in the South Pacific with three million people living in the stone age, speaking over 700 different languages, and most of whom had no idea of who Jesus Christ is. Vic left first and when he got settled was to send a telegram back for Elsie and their four kids to join him. Weeks passed with no telegram and Elsie decided to go find Vic. She left with Mike the oldest at seven years of age and him the youngest at six months. When the plane landed in Port Moresby the capital, the host at the guest house said Vic went up to the southern highlands - and there is a plane going there tomorrow. They got on that small plane. Landing on the grass airstrip of Mt. Hagen they spent the afternoon waiting for Vic. As darkness fell there was still no sign of Vic. An Australian offered Elsie and the kids a ride to the only motel in town. While she and the kids were sitting at the table eating supper, a MAF (Mission Aviation Pilot) pilot tapped Elsie on the shoulder, and said that he knows where Vic is. He added that he could fly them to Mendi tomorrow to be with him. Elsie said that's the closest she's ever been to kissing a man besides Vic.

In 1975 Vic completed the translation and continues to work with the church there to be able to function on its own. He and Elsie now live on the North coast of Australia. Their ministry now focuses on the leaders and Christians of other countries of the South Pacific. Vic and Elsie still spend two to three months per year in PNG as support, encouragement and accountability for the church there.