Blake and Cathy Purcell with their three children moved to Leningrad in 1990 and became one of the first Evangelical missionaries allowed to live in the Soviet Union post the Communist Revolution of 1917. Blake was born in Texas in 1958. He dedicated his life to ministry for Christ in 1974 in Mount Vernon, Virginia. He graduated from Texas A&M and then served as an officer in the United States Infantry before going into full-time ministry with the Navigators at the United States Air Force Academy in 1984. Blake was Ordained in the Presbyterian Church in America in 1998 as a teaching elder (minister) of the Gospel. He founded the Reformed Presbyterian Church of St. Petersburg and the Biblical Theological Seminary of St. Petersburg in 1999. He has preached on missions in churches in 20 states, Scotland and Canada. The Purcells were blessed with three more children after they moved to the Soviet Union: Lewis, 21, Zachary, 19, and Laura, 16, are living in Russia with their parents. Emily (now wife of Ford Burgher and mother of Lewis, 2, and Teddy, 5 months), teaches in an inner city school in Dallas, TX; Graham, 26, and John Mark, 24, attend college in the USA.