The family and friends of Lance Cpl. Trevor Roberts said their final goodbyes to the 21-year-old Marine Monday morning.

Roberts was killed in the Al Anbar province of Iraq March 24, when a roadside bomb exploded under his Humvee.

He was expected to return home in April.

Roberts’ funeral was held Monday morning at Oklahoma City’s Eagle Heights Baptist Church.

Speaking to a capacity crowd, Eagle Heights pastor Rob Olmstead praised Roberts’ life and his commitment to his faith and his family.

“If you had Trevor as a friend, you had a friend forever,” Olmstead said. “He was a man of high passion, commitment and conviction.”

Standing in front of Roberts’ silver-gray, flag-draped casket, Olmstead spoke about the Marine’s love of his parents, his friends, and of his deep Christian faith.

“He could always be counted on,” Olmstead said. “He was always helpful. Whatever it was, Trevor was in the middle of it.”

Roberts, he said, was always looking for “the best way” to do something. “He was never satisfied just doing. He wanted to get beyond that.”

And it was that type of personality, Olmstead said, that made Roberts a good Marine. “He told me he wanted to do this all the way. He wanted to be a Marine because the Marines were the toughest.”

Roberts, Olmstead said, could also see both sides of the Iraq conflict. “His experiences in Iraq were pretty amazing. He was always aware of the culture and slow to judge it. He was open to learning from it.”

Roberts, assigned to Marine Forces Reserve’s 2nd Battalion, 14th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, was in the right rear passenger seat of the Humvee when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off underneath the vehicle, said 1st Sgt. Scott Baker, a spokesman for Roberts’ unit. Another person riding in the vehicle suffered a minor concussion.

Baker said Roberts was one of 30 Marines from the unit who volunteered to go to Iraq and had been in that country for seven months.

“He loved being a Marine,” Olmstead said. “He told his parents that after he got out of the Marines he wanted to be a foreign missionary. Trevor was pretty much a fixture on any trip the church took.”

The church’s other pastor, the Rev. Brad Davis, said Roberts “proved his love” for his fellow man by going to Iraq.