Our Story
The Beginnings of Anabaptist Savings and Loan – International (ASAL)
A Vision Story
By Merle Herr
The Core Problem: A Gospel Heritage with a Missing Piece
The story of Anabaptist Savings and Loan – International (ASAL) begins with a profound missionary realization. Roman Miller, who grew up in Latin America, witnessed firsthand the incredible spiritual fruit of fifty years of Anabaptist missionary efforts. However, he also observed a systemic vulnerability: the traditional missionaries, while faithful evangelists and church planters, were not entrepreneurs.
In North America, the Anabaptist faith is historically inseparable from a rich heritage of business acumen, agricultural excellence, and community mutual aid. Because this economic blueprint was omitted from early global missions, newly planted Latin American churches were left stripped of this heritage. To exacerbate the problem, charitable funds flowed freely from North American Anabaptist churches, and unintentionally created a dependence mindset in Latin churches. Believers possessed a vibrant faith but lacked the practical, biblical tools to break cycles of poverty, manage resources, or build self-reliant communities.
For years, Roman carried a burning vision to bring the “economics of the Gospel” to these communities. Countless missionary trips back to Anabaptist Latin churches only fed the fire burning in Roman’s soul. But everywhere he voiced the vision that something needed to be done about it, he faced skepticism and outright doubt. Roman was quietly relentless—even approaching Christian Aid Ministries (the Anabaptist community’s largest non-profit) requesting a listening ear for his vision. Everyone’s response was the same: impossible.
The Turning Point: Beans on Broad
In a last-ditch effort to save the vision, Roman reached out to Merle Herr, part of the pioneering group that developed the vision for Anabaptist Financial and Anabaptist Foundation (AF). Merle had spent over a decade building AF, borrowing foundational concepts from existing Anabaptist-based loan organizations. Yet AF was built differently: it uniquely combined business education with capital, designing a structured ecosystem of financial seminars, business coaching, and non-profit money management.
From a distance, Roman had observed the rise of AF and its distinct kingdom investment model. Intuitively, he knew that this integration of education and capital held the key to the long-standing economic struggles within Latin American mission churches.
The two men met at Beans on Broad, a coffee shop, to discuss the matter. At first, Merle thought it was a typical coffee shop conversation of light, engaging talk, but he noticed that Roman seemed unusually distressed. Roman brought nothing written down, laying out his entire burden verbally but with emotional finality. After several hours of describing the need and the overwhelming regulatory and logistical hurdles of international finance, Roman looked across the table and declared:
“This vision will die at this table if you say no.”
Deeply moved and unwilling to be the one to kill a God-given dream, Merle offered a lifeline: twenty hours of his time to translate Roman’s verbal burden into a compelling written vision story that would bring clarity to the issue.
Those twenty hours quickly spiraled into two hundred grueling hours of deep research and strategic searching. Ultimately, Merle arrived at the same painful conclusion: it was impossible. Central to any strategic solution, they lacked specialized knowledge of complex international securities laws. For a second time, the vision faced pending death at the table.
The Lord’s Conviction and the Resulting Sacrifice
In his spirit, Merle remembered one final hope: Leland Ulrich. Like Roman, Leland had grown up as a missionary child in Latin America, witnessing the economic vulnerabilities of the mission churches firsthand. Crucially, while growing up in Costa Rica, Leland had acquired the business acumen and strategic insight into Latin American economics that Roman and Merle lacked.
When Merle reached out, Leland respectfully declined. He was already overcommitted with multiple business engagements.
For a month, the vision hung in the balance. However, the Holy Spirit began a profound work of conviction in Leland’s heart. He found no peace of mind after saying “no.” Leland recalls being haunted by the image of the dying vision, enduring restless nights. Recognizing the deep spiritual and economic needs of the very communities that had raised him, Leland chose to obey the Lord’s prompting. It was a costly sacrifice—requiring him to completely reorder his existing business commitments and intentionally walk in obedience for the spiritual and material good of the brotherhood.
Leland called Merle back. He was in.
The Missing Piece: Securing Trust Through Social Capital
With the operational and legal framework beginning to take shape under Roman, Leland, and Merle, a critical missing piece remained: communal trust. Sending investment capital outside of the United States to struggling business efforts in Latin countries was a high-risk venture that required significant, seasoned board talent to build credibility within conservative Anabaptist communities.
To bridge this gap, Merle reached out to Ken Burkholder. Ken had served as the founding chairman of Anabaptist Financial for its first decade. Having worked side by side for years—Merle as the founding CEO and Ken as the founding Chairman—the two men had forged a deep relationship. They knew how to pull together to build a robust board and establish new organizations from the ground up.
Merle recruited Ken to serve on the newly assembled ASAL board. Ken’s presence brought an invaluable element of trusted social capital to the risky venture. The community trusted the organization in large part because Ken willingly brought his God-given influence, reputation, and steady leadership to bear upon it.
Anchoring the Numbers: A Homegrown CFO
Any financial institution relies entirely on its Chief Financial Officer for the absolute integrity of its financials, and ASAL could not start without an incredibly solid financial foundation. The financial acumen required for this role was daunting—far beyond the capabilities of a typical MBA graduate. The team needed a man who had truly endured the trenches of business finance. Yet they did not want a traditional banking CFO; they required someone homegrown inside an Anabaptist-run business who possessed a deeply missional mindset.
At the time, Merle was leading the business coaching department at Anabaptist Financial. LaRay Stover was the financial controller for a group of companies that included international entities and served on the local AF business seminar committee. He was also being recruited as one of the pending coaches under Merle’s supervision, specializing specifically in accounting and finance coaching.
LaRay was a humble, quiet-spoken expert in accounting who possessed the exact blend of rigorous financial wisdom and cultural understanding the startup needed.
It was a clear and obvious choice for Merle to tap LaRay and ask him to consider becoming the founding CFO of ASAL. Just as expected, the deeply missional purpose of reaching and lifting up poorer brothers in Latin America captured LaRay’s heart and aligned perfectly with his sense of calling in finance. With LaRay on board, the financial integrity of the institution was secured.
The Innovation: Spiritually Aligned Capital and Coaching
With the leadership team finally complete, Leland brought another transformative asset to ASAL: a proven coaching model drawn from his deep business experience with Corland Partners. Merle integrated his strategic educational insights, drawing from the way Anabaptist Financial successfully coupled business training with lending.
The founders recognized that capital alone could not fix an entrenched mindset—that charity funds, not loans, were the silver bullet, was itself part of the problem. Guided by this conviction, ASAL embedded structured business coaching into every single loan. This was not traditional, corporate secular coaching aimed at maximizing profit margins. Instead, it was an entirely unique model—deeply and intentionally aligned with Anabaptist stewardship and a kingdom-minded approach to economics.
By combining capital and coaching, ASAL unlocked transformative results. The structured coaching taught entrepreneurs how to manage cash flow, scale ethically, and operate their business as a sustainable kingdom business, while the secure capital provided the vital fuel to make it happen.
The Leadership Team’s Roles
Each central figure stepped into a distinct, vital role to ensure the organization’s success:
- Leland Ulrich (Founding CEO): Led ASAL through its critical first seven years of growth. He navigated complex international securities compliance and successfully embedded the Corland Partners–inspired kingdom coaching model into the organization’s DNA.
- Roman Miller (Founding Investment Officer): Traveled extensively, masterfully convincing North American investors of the deeply missional purpose of investing their dollars into the poor—not as charity, but as kingdom capital to lift up struggling families and businesses.
- LaRay Stover (Founding CFO): Brought years of battle-tested financial acumen and quiet expertise to anchor the financial integrity of the institution, driven by a deep missional call to serve the international brotherhood.
- Ken Burkholder (Founding Board Member and Trust Anchor): Utilized his extensive governance experience and trusted community standing to anchor the new board, providing the vital social capital and reputational trust needed to validate the international venture.
- Merle Herr (Co-Founder and Vision Shepherd): After putting in two hundred foundational hours to build the structural and visionary blueprint and rallying key stakeholders, Merle transitioned into a vital background role. Remaining on the management team at Anabaptist Financial, Merle served on the ASAL board council, acting as a steady anchor to guard and shepherd the original vision as it began to scale.
The Fruit of the Mission: The Missing Piece Filled
Through the obedience, collaboration, and sacrifice of these leaders, ASAL successfully replicated the North American brotherhood lending model on international soil. Under Leland’s initial seven years as CEO, with Ken anchoring trust on the board, LaRay managing the books with integrity, Roman mobilizing capital, and Merle shepherding the vision, the organization grew to manage and distribute $60 million of capital coupled with kingdom coaching.
Most importantly, the original gap and incompleteness of the early missionary efforts was finally being filled in. By coupling the spiritual message of salvation with the practical heritage of biblical stewardship, the real, holistic hope of the Gospel of Jesus was experienced across these Latin American communities. ASAL stands today as a living testament to what happens when leaders refuse to let a divine vision die at a coffee shop table, or in restless sleep, choosing instead to bridge the gap between faith and economics for the glory of God.