16 Jul Ministry Funds Needed for Jonetta, Global Ministries Staff

Jonetta, one of the newest staff members of Global Ministries, has a ministry opportunity in a limited-access country. To enable her participation, she needs $4,000 for initial ministry expenses. Jonetta has limited resources available to her and is currently involved in intense training for preparation for ministry.

Global Ministries would like to encourage individuals and churches to prayerfully consider partnering with Jonetta to raise the necessary funds. Then she can begin this ministry immediately after her training period.

If you or your church would like to partner with Jonetta, please send checks made payable to Global Ministries with a note stating the donation is for the “Jonetta ministry fund.”

(We’re not using her full name for security reasons.)

25 Jun Over 4300 Decisions for Christ in Sierra Leone

UBs trained to evangelize among the Vai people.

Jeff Bleijerveld (right), Director of Global Ministries

The month of April was a busy time for the outreach team working in Pujehun Province in Sierra Leone. The outreach effort was led by Rev. Peter Kainwo (right), the conference director of Evangelism and Church Planting. Outreach consisted of multiple presentations of the Jesus Film in the Mende language and community visitation among the Vai People by 19 volunteers who were trained prior to the outreach effort in household evangelism.

In all, a total of 6,489 persons viewed the film and 4,362 made decisions to follow Christ over the course of the campaign. Although they would like to have continued on to additional towns and villages, rain made the road impassible.

At the end of the campaign, a team of conference leaders traveled into Liberia to visit with a congregation eager to align themselves with the Sierra Leone United Brethren in Christ.

Rev. Kainwo asks that we continue to pray for their outreach efforts, and for the identification and training of local leaders. The Sierra Leone Conference thanks everyone for the prayer support and for the funds made available for the transportation needs through Global Ministries Antioch Fund.

07 Jun El Salvador Medical Team: Nov 1-9

We just received confirmation that the United Brethren churches in El Salvador will host a medical mission team this fall. Rev. Gonzalo Alas (right), superintendent in El Salvador, has recommended the trip for November 1-9, 2013.

The team will hold five clinics–one in each of the UB churches in El Salvador.

Cost: $700 per person, plus airfare.

The trip is open to nurses, doctors, pharmacists, and support staff. The team size is being limited to 12 persons.

If you’re interested in participating on this team, please contact Donna Hollopeter in Global Ministries:

Email: donna@ub.org
Phone: 888-622-3019.

04 Jun Shirley Fretz – 18 Years in Sierra Leone

L-r: Audrey Federlein, Kathy Jones, and Shirley Fretz.

Steve Dennie, Communications Director

On the second night of General Conference–Thursday, May 30–the evening service was held at the Grace UB church in Sherkston, Ontario. It was a good place for an international gathering. Grace has been a strong missions-minded church over the years, producing a number of missionaries and faithfully supporting the work of United Brethren missions. Pastor Dan Nickless said they view themselves as a sending church, having raised up so many missionaries and pastors since the church began in 1897.

In the congregation that night were three former missionaries in Sierra Leone:

• Kathy Jones, a nurse at Mattru Hospital 1958-1967.
• Audrey Federlein, who served in Mattru at Centennial Secondary School 1965-1968 in various capacities–math teacher, dean of girls, and for two years, national president of the Christian Endeavor Union.
• Shirley Fretz, who served 18 years in Sierra Leone, 1967-1985.

Back in 1985, after she concluded her missionary service, I interviewed Shirley Fretz and wrote an article for the United Brethren magazine. I tracked it down.

Growing up at Grace UB, Shirley Fretz dreamed of being a missionary, like two other women from the church who were then serving in Sierra Leone–Olive Weaver and Ruth Benner. She spent ten years working for law firms, but couldn’t escape the missionary call. She eventually responded to an altar call by Bishop Clyde W. Meadows, a call to serve Christ wherever he wanted.

Before she knew it, she was contacted by the UB missions office. They needed someone to oversee the Minnie Mull school boarding home in Sierra Leone. Was she interested?

She arrived at Minnie Mull in April 1967. The school had over 400 primary-age girls with 104 staying in the boarding home. Shirley procured supplies, kept financial records, helped supervise cooking and laundry, counseled children, and generally served as a mother to over 100 youngsters.

Her second term, which began in August 1971, found her in a whole new role: business manager of Mattru Hospital. She spent the next ten years at Mattru handling the payroll, bookkeeping, banking, and other non-medical responsibilities. After the October 1974 arrival of Dr. Ron Baker, Shirley watched Mattru develop into a thriving hospital.

In 1981, Shirley decided the hospital needed a male administrator, especially since the culture favored having men in supervisory positions. Shirley returned to Canada to find a job, but the UB Missions office had a different idea. They asked her to work with Sierra Leone churches in Christian education. So she returned for two more terms.

This time, Shirley lived in Bumpe. For four years, she devoted much of her time to the Bumpe Primary School children. After school, kids walked to her house for Bible classes, and she also had the opportunity to provide one-on-one spiritual counsel. Later, her job was placed under the direction of the national church’s Christian Education Department. They held clinics and workshops in various distrusts, helped with the camping program, and emphasized Christian Endeavor.

Shirley’s mother wrote her a letter nearly every week during those 18 missionary years. The letters often arrived three or four at a time. Shirley tried to be just as faithful in writing back.

“She was very happy when I became a missionary,” Shirley said of her mother. “She had been praying for Sierra Leone before I was even born. Tears came every time I left for Africa, but she knew the Lord wanted me there.”

Shirley’s father died in December 1983. He had been hospitalized almost continuously since July 1982 with cancer. Several times, when his condition appeared especially bad, the family was called to the hospital. Shirley, on furlough at the time, had a difficult decision to make: should she stay home, or return to Sierra Leone in December as scheduled?

“My dad was very alert right up to the end,” she recalled. “He knew exactly what was going on, and I’m sure that if I had visited him the day I was supposed to leave for Africa, he’d have said, ‘What happened? Why didn’t you go?’ I knew he would be gone soon, and it would be good for me to be there, but you can’t just stay home and wait for something to happen.”

So she left at the end of November and arrived in Bumpe on December 6, 1983. The next day she received a telegram saying her father had passed away on December 6.

“Bishop Datema was in Sierra Leone at the time, and he asked me if I wanted a memorial service. It was held the same day as the funeral at home. The Bumpe church was full. Many people came, even though they didn’t know Dad. The Bumpe primary children sang a couple of Dad’s favorite songs, and then Bishop Datema preached a very meaningful message which I greatly appreciated. It was almost like being home for the funeral.”

Although Shirley fully supported the nationalization process, it brought an end to her position.

Everyone knew Shirley was leaving the country–this time for good–on Monday, August 19. The stream of constant good-byes began on Saturday. “I must have had 50 people visit my house between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning. To Sierra Leoneans, people are important. When they know you are leaving, everybody wants to come and spend time with you. It was rather hard saying good-bye to all the people I had grown close to during my 18 years there, knowing I might not see them again.”

Shirley wanted to remain in some kind of mission work. She had invitations to interview with a variety of mission agencies, and accepted a position as receptionist-bookkeeper for the Brethren in Christ missions office in Stevensville, Ontario. She started on December 2, 1985.

26 May The Story of Jill Van Deusen

Jill Van Deusen

Jill Van Deusen, 70, a former missionary in Sierra Leone, passed away on Thursday, May 23, 2013, at the University of Toledo Medical Center.

Jill, a native of Hillsdale, Mich., served as a teacher in Sierra Leone for nine years. After returning from Sierra Leone, Jill worked two years in Washington DC with Angel Tree Prison Fellowship, and then moved to Archbold, Ohio, where she taught school at Four County Career Center, near Archbold, and also worked at the Archbold Library. She was a member of the Archbold Evangelical Church.

Jill Van Deusen almost died in Africa, back in August 1979. Here is that story. 

Steve Dennie, Communications Director

On Tuesday afternoon, August 21, 1979, Jill Van Deusen told Dr. Ron Baker that she had experienced weakness in her right hand since that morning. The next morning, Jill couldn’t get out of bed; she was almost completely paralyzed.

The quick paralysis shocked Dr. Baker, and he wondered what they could do in a minimally equipped bush hospital. How would they keep her breathing if her respiratory muscles became paralyzed? If they tried to evacuate her from the country, could she survive the trip? He consulted, by radio, doctors in Freetown and at the Wesleyan hospital at Kamakwie, and a doctor from the Catholic hospital in Serabu came to Mattru. They all agreed that Jill probably had Guillain-Barre Syndrom, a rare disease of the spinal cord, and that she needed to leave for Freetown right away.

All the missionaries pitched in. Judy Hoath ran the outpatient clinic. Sharon Frank took the Catholic doctor back to Serabu. Sharon Birdsall gathered the necessary drugs and medical equipment. Dennis Burkholder and Scott Taylor ran lab tests on Jill. Tina Wilkins helped care for Jill. Phil Fiedler made last-minute mechanical repairs on the hospital van for the trip. Cathy Jordan packed Jill’s things, and Jane Baker packed for Ron. Throughout the day, many Africans came to show their concern.

They removed the middle seat from the hospital van to accommodate a stretcher. Then, after a prayer time, Dr. Baker and Sharon Birdsall, along with an African driver, began the long journey to Freetown. Cathy Jordan and another African, Joseph Jaiah, followed behind in a Suzuki jeep. The bumpy dirt road jostled the stretcher, so they stopped several times to readjust it.

After two-and-a-half hours, they arrived in Bumpe, where Jerry Datema and June Brown were waiting. June Brown brought another blanket, Jerry Datema offered a prayer, and they continued the remaining 150 miles to Freetown. They arrived at Connaught Government Hospital in Freetown at 1:30 Thursday morning. Jill was doing well, but was glad the trip was over.

The paralysis didn’t spread much that night. “As always, Jill was courageous and calm, a quality that gave strength to all of us,” Dr. Baker later wrote in the November 1979 United Brethren magazine. “Her attitude in the face of near death and almost total paralysis revealed an underlying faith that we will never forget.” (more…)

25 May 25 Years Later: Remembering Patti Stone

Steve Dennie, Communications Director

On September 2, 1981, Bishop Clarence Kopp, Jr., had a unique encounter at a restaurant in Huntington, Ind. He met a man he had nudged toward the Lord 20 years before, when he was pastoring Prescott Avenue UB church in Dayton, Ohio.

It was a home visit during a conference evangelism workshop. As Kopp explained the Four Spiritual Laws to this man, fellow minister Rev. Howard Anderson held the man’s baby daughter in his lap. The man didn’t want to accept Christ then, so Kopp left him a piece of paper on which he had written out the Four Spiritual Laws. The man kept the paper and reread it almost daily. Finally, he did become a Christian.

What was he doing in Huntington, 20 years later? He was bringing his daughter to Huntington University.

The girl’s name was Patti Stone.

Patti started her college education at Huntington University and then transferred to Marion College (now Indiana Wesleyan) in Marion, Ind., to study nursing.

Wendy Feusse, who worked at Huntington University, joined a small work crew from the college which traveled to Sierra Leone in January 1985. They were joined by Michelle Becker and Patti Stone, two former Huntington students who were now intern nurses from Marion College.

In Freetown, the group went to the beach with some Peace Corps workers. A huge wave hit the raft Wendy was using, and she found herself floating facedown, paralyzed, unable to move. Patti saved her life that day. But that was only the beginning of what Patti did for Wendy.

“From the time I painfully entered the van until the following day,” Wendy recalled, “she served as my personal nurse. She held my hand, talked to me about my fears, helped me laugh, reassured me, prayed with me, loved me. We hardly knew each other. But somehow, she understood what I was going through, as I lay on my bed feeling lonelier than ever and enduring the most pain I have ever experienced. I will never forget that special time of healing.”

At Mattru, Wendy says, “I was amazed by Patti as I watched her in action. She walked around the hospital like she had grown up there. Many Sierra Leoneans already knew Patti; they were drawn to her. She related almost naturally to the people and the environment. You could tell she loved being there. It radiated from her.” (more…)

23 May The Story of Two Teachers in Haiti

Rosemond

Rosemond with students

Pauline

Pauline and some of her students

Jeff Bleijerveld, Director of Global Ministries

Meet Rosemond and Pauline, two examples of dedicated teachers pouring their lives into the next generation in Port-au-Prince, Haiti:

Rosemond has been teaching for 10 years and currently teaches grade 6 at the school in Delmas 33, one of the United Brethren churches in Haiti. He wanted to be a teacher from a young age. He loves the children and especially enjoys teaching them history.

Rosemond and his family lived in a rural village when he was a child. He was able to attend elementary school at an unaccredited church school because it was supported by the church and those outside the community. As a result of being given this chance and exceling in school, his family moved in to the city of Port-au-Prince so he could attend high school. He then went on to get his teaching qualifications so that he could give an even better standard of teaching than the one he had received.

“Haiti needs schools,” Rosemond says. He likes to “bring my contribution to the children’s lives” so that they can “bring their contribution to Haiti as adults.” He is very glad to bring education and God’s love to children, since it meant so much to him at that age. He is grateful that school gave him a chance at a better life.

Pauline teaches grade 2 and loves teaching the children math and social studies. She loves the children. She says, “If you want to fight against vicious cycles and change culture, education is important.” She says she views her job as important because “any child could be the citizen that changes Haiti’s future.”

Pauline also enjoyed school growing up and went on to become a qualified teacher. As a child, she attended a quality private school because of the support she received through a child sponsorship program. She is so thankful for the sponsor who gave her that opportunity.

Education is investing in the next generation. Both Rosemond and Pauline were given roads to a better future through the educational opportunities they were given.

The Delmas 33 school is the result of a partnership between the United Brethren in Christ Church in Haiti and Christian Horizons Global. Together we are able to provide the opportunity for children to learn in an environment where they are also shown God’s love through teachers that love them. One way or another, children are Haiti’s future. It is our hope that they grow secure in God’s love and with the skills they need to make that future bright.

We have four United Brethren schools in Haiti. Currently, 194 children are sponsored and another 151 children are on a waiting list (128 children have never been sponsored, and 23 have lost their sponsor and are waiting to be re-sponsored).

There are two ways you can support the education of children in Haiti:

1. Support an individual child for just $36 per month
2. Provide a special gift to help fund the United Brethren school the children attend.

To learn more or to make a donation, visit our partners CH Global at CHGlobal.org/give/haiti/

14 May Vitamins for Honduras

Packing vitamins at Jerusalem Chapel for the Honduras Medical Team.

Jerusalem Chapel (Churchville, Va.) collected 64,000 vitamins for this summer’s Global Ministries medical mission trip to Honduras. That’s enough for 2100 patients. On May 7, people gathered at the church to pack the vitamins for the trip, which will hold clinics in five villages.

This is the fifth year that Jerusalem Chapel has collected vitamins for the Honduras medical team. Four persons from Jerusalem Chapel will be part of this summer’s medical team: Dr. John Ocheltree, and Rick, Wendy, and Christopher Wimer.

08 May Macau Church May Need to Relocate

The Living Stone UB church in Macau is looking at the possibilty of relocating. Their landlord significantly raised their rent, so they are looking at other possibilities, and property in Macau is very expensive. You might keep them in prayer as they go through this possible major transition. Both the church and the English Language Program use this facility.

Living Stone is a bi-lingual church, with services conducted in both English and Cantonese. The other (and first) UB church in Macau, Living Water, conducts services only in Cantonese.