An international ministry that reaches thousands of lives can start with humble beginnings. For Rob Evans, it started with a plate of doughnuts.

After he crafted a simple object lesson using doughnuts to explain God’s love, his own kids loved it, so he taught it in Sunday School.

When he later recorded an album of original songs telling Bible stories, he included a song he wrote about the concept.

Thirty-five years later, Evans is known worldwide as the “Donut Repair Man.” With a doughnut puppet sidekick named Duncan, Evans uses songs, stories and audience participation to teach kids that “life without God’s love is like a doughnut – ’cause there’s a hole in the middle of your heart.”

Evans will perform at 4 p.m. today at the First Presbyterian Church’s “Home Fest at First” celebration.

According to Evans, God has blessed his ministry far beyond what he ever thought possible.

“You think – I’ve got a guitar, I’ve got these googly big glasses, and a stupid hat, and I wear coveralls, and I cry about doughnuts, and God used it? Cut me a break. That’s impossible,” Evans said. “But our God is the God of the impossible.”

Evans’ concerts are high-energy, with jumping, clapping, and lots of audience participation.

He wrote his songs, and developed his style, by trying it out first on his own kids.

“My mission field is children,” he said. “So I want to learn childese.”

The kids loved it when he would tell Bible stories in first person, Evans said.

“My kids loved it when I would be the lion in the lion’s den,” he said. “They would love it when I would be the mustard seed, or I would be the lady who lost her coin. I would be the little boy who gave his lunch to Jesus, or I would be the sower.”

Evans got his start thanks to his wife.

“My wife way back when sacrificed a year’s vacation so I could make recording,” he said. “She secretly saved a couple thousand dollars so we could go on a holiday.”

But by giving up that vacation, God blessed them with more, Evans said.

“Within that year we got four different invitations to go four different places, ” he said.

Evans met and married his wife Shelly the same year he became a Christian. They have six children, including one they adopted from Russia.

Evans is a big hit with kids – but also with young adults and parents who were kids as his songs were first being published.

“I do Donut Man concerts, and yes the little kids come up front, but what’s interesting is all the 20-somethings that are standing in the back, with their arms folded,” he said.

Evans always gives grown-up fans the same message.

“I put my hand on their shoulder, look them in the eye and say ‘tag, you’re it,'” he said. “It’s that laying on of hands and passing it on to the next generation.”

Evans said he counts on the younger ones to carry on the message of the gospel.

“There’s more time behind me than ahead of me, now that I’m 63,” he said.

In that time, Evans has had the opportunity to do shows in the United Kingdom, Russia, Italy, Nigeria, Korea, Barbados and Singapore. He’s produced 19 CDs and 16 DVDs, with more than 6 million copies sold.

“I sang for 30,000 people a pop in a Billy Graham crusade, along with Psalty the Singing Songbook,” he said.

At packed stadiums across America, Evans had to think about how to match the giant sets built by Ernie Rettino and Debbie Kerner, who created the Psalty character.

“I was like, how do I compete with that? I know. I need the world’s biggest doughnut,” Evans said.

Evans’ team would get the largest construction tire inner tube they could find at a junkyard or truck supply, and paint it brown- along with a huge beach ball to act as the center, and talcum powder to look like powdered sugar.

“I remember in Pittsburgh saying, ‘And now,’ – and my voice echoed throughout the amphitheater – ‘We are going to repair (repair, repair,) the world’s biggest (biggest, biggest), doughnut.’

“And 30,000 kids went ‘WOW’.”

While that was an amazing moment, he said, there were some tender ones too. He once talked to a mother at a concert in Syracuse whose son had died from leukemia just months before.

“She said, ‘Just a few days before he died, he was watching your resurrection celebration video,'” Evans said. “He said ‘See mom, you’ll see me again in heaven.’ … I was there with him in his hospital room as he lay dying, and that I was a comfort to him, and therefore a comfort to her.

“Those things give you goosebumps.”

Things have changed a lot in the world of music since the Donut Man’s peak in popularity.

“The business side of what I’m doing is rather dismal because of demise of CD sales, the demise of book stores,” he said. “The heyday of what I did was when book stores were at their peak.”

The only way you could get this material was on a cassettes or VHS, and then CDs. But now people expect songs for free, he said.

Evans has a website, donutman.com, and is on Facebook and YouTube as theRealDonutMan, where he uploads his latest projects. His most recent song, based on Genesis 1, just went live this week.

“Now everybody can post to YouTube,” Evans said. “That’s why it’s cool to get invitations to Fort Dodge and sing in a church. I’m relying on 20-somethings and 30-somethings to remember the good old Donut Man.”

Being a doughnut repair man has never been a full-time job. Off stage, Evans has always been a regular repair man.

“I never quit my day job,” he said. “That costume has always come right out of my closet. Since 1971, 72, I’ve been a builder. … Roofing, windows, siding, construction.

“I never thought this would last. If it ever posted any black ink, I immediately took that and put it into real estate.”

Evans joined the Catholic Church in 2006. His videos appear on the Catholic network EWTN, and he has made a series teaching kids about the scriptural basis of the Mass.

In these later years of his ministry, Evans said, bringing together Catholics and Protestants is his greatest goal.

The Catholic/Protestant split reminds him of his own family growing up.

“I’m a child of divorce. I came from a very broken home,” he said. “We all know 500 years ago there was terrible divorce where the Protestant faith divorced the Catholic church and vice-versa. … Horrible, bloody divorce.”

In order to obey Jesus, all Christians must bless each other, Evans said.

“Blessing is proactive. If you had bread, saw a starving man and walked by, you cursed him,” Evans said. “The darkest spirit found in Catholicism is the spirit that curses the Protestant church. The darkest spirit in the Protestant church is the spirit that curses the Catholic Church.”