The youngest of 12 children, Peter Preus, pronounced P-roy-s (rhymes with Royce), grew up in a pastor’s house and eight of his ten brothers became ordained Lutheran ministers. “I always resisted the idea of being a pastor myself,” Preus said. “I didn’t want people to think that I became a pastor only because I couldn’t do—or was too lazy to look into doing—anything else.”
As a high school student, Preus moved to Berlin, Germany, to study at the John F. Kennedy International High School. It was while he was in Berlin that Preus witnessed the work of God in the mission church he attended. When I first got to Berlin in 2011,” he stated, “A handful of Persian converts from Islam attended this church.When I left in 2014, hundreds of Persians had converted from Islam and attended my church.”
One of his best friends, Poya Zamani, a convert from Afghanistan, was baptized into that congregation. Preus described his interactions with people in his high school. “Berlin is a Godless place. People in my high school were curious and fascinated, not at all combative or hostile, when I said that I believed that abortion is murder and that macroevolution is a myth.They had simply never heard anyone with that opinion before.”
