(Advance Missionaries #00779Z) commissioned during General Conference tell about how they found their purpose in God’s mission. Some, like Dr. Pedro Zavala, an author, researcher and professor of theology, were surprised to discover what they had known all along.
“I think the missionary vocation in my life, now that I look back, has always been present. From childhood, in my adolescence and now in my adulthood, the calling in my case has always been to stay on the borders, physically and academically speaking, to be in the borders.”
Zavala will be working as an academic officer associate and professor for Facultad de Teología SEUT, the 140-year-old Protestant seminary in Madrid, Spain.
Karen Lissa Goodwin, who grew up in Brazil with her missionary family, became a teacher by profession and taught in Brazil. She is moving to Angola to become the vice general director of the School for Methodist Mission in Luanda.
Jovanir Lage, also from Brazil, will be teaching at the United Methodist University in Cambine, Mozambique. Jean Martial Mbah, from Gabon, is an historian on the faculty of Theology with the Methodist University of Angola.
Three young women who recently completed terms as Global Mission Fellows, Rachel Therieh from India, who served in Cambodia; Mamei Sombo Lansana from Sierra Leone, who served in Germany; and Abigayle Chesca Bolado from the Philippines, who served in Colombia, have accepted positions that further their work in one way or another with other young adults. A fourth missionary, the Rev. Jane Eesley, served as a Mission Intern in an earlier iteration of Global Ministries’ young adult missionary program.
Michelle Kunce, from Atlanta, Georgia, is the international partnership promoter for Shade and Fresh Water in São Paulo, Brazil.
Two other women are commissioned to work in leadership development, Rosangelica Acevedo in Puerto Rico and Rebecca Kerubo Maiko from Kenya, who will be working in the Tanganyika Annual Conference of North Katanga.
Evangelists were well represented in this missionary group. The Rev. Gilvren Antipolo Decal serves in the Tanganyika Annual Conference in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rev. Sarah Mae Gabuyo, is the pastor of the English-speaking congregation of the Methodist Evangelical Churches in Rome, Italy.
Leslaw Olgierd Kawalec, from Poland, is headed to Donegal County in the Republic of Ireland to aid in forming congregations among Polish and Eastern European communities that have recently settled there.
The Rev. Eric Kalumba from the DRC will become the first Global Ministries missionary to serve as a church planter with the United Methodist Church of Madagascar.
The Rev. Valdir Seibel, originally from Brazil, serves as the pastor of the International Church in Geneva.
The Rev. Daniel Humberto Contreras Varas, a pastor from Chile, will serve as the mission program director for the United Methodist Mission in Honduras.
A Korean-American missionary couple from the California-Nevada Annual Conference will become country director (Rev. D. Kim) and coordinator for community development (S. Lee) with one of the Southeast Asian Mission Initiatives.
The Central African Mission will receive its first agricultural missionary, G. Seza. A second agricultural missionary, Norman Yekeye from Zimbabwe, will be working in the North Katanga area as an agriculturalist and rural economic development specialist.
Dennis Sandy is a certified management accountant from Freetown, Sierra Leone will serve as the financial officer, based in Uganda.
excerpt from a story by Christie R. House, consultant writer and editor with Global Ministries and UMCOR.
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