Ruth Burgess was born in August 1939, in the city of Pune in Maharashtra State in India. Her parents were Christian missionaries who ran an orphanage and school while Burgess and her younger brother Teddy and younger sister Helen were growing up.

Burgess describes herself as a child of the “third culture” because of her blended Indian upbringing and assimilation with American Midwestern culture. The family came to live in the U.S. in the early 1950s, and Burgess attended high school in Oklahoma and Texas.

She later attended junior college in Texas and later worked to earn masters and doctorates, both at Mizzou. Her careers have since taken her to speech-language pathology, research, and professing at Missouri State University.

She married Stan Burgess in Abilene, Texas in February 1960. The two first met at a prayer meeting for missionaries, and their paths crossed again in 1959 after the family moved to Texas from India. Burgess said the marriage has been a physical journey (with many travels across Europe and Asia) and a spiritual journey (as the couple came to grips with class, caste, race and gender discrimination within Christianity).

They raised five children together: John, Stanley, Scott, and the twins Amanda and Justin.

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Music is Bach Cello Suite no. 3 by Colin Carr from the Free Music Archive.

Episodes are edited, recorded, mixed, and published by Diana Dudenhoeffer.