Marvin Church is proud to support full-time missionary individuals or couples around the world. Some are in our back yard, so to speak, and some are on the other side of the world. The Marvin Mission Team coordinates support of these missionaries, not only monetarily, but with prayer, cards, letters, emails and Facebook messages. The Mission Team keeps up with their successes or hardships with reports at monthly meetings. Support comes from the entire Marvin membership through the church budget. Aren’t we glad to be part of a mission church that has big hearts and big hands serving our neighbors!
Robert and Roberta Adair
Asian Access
Robert and Roberta have been planting churches halfway around the world on the ravaged east coast of Japan (March 11, 2011, 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami). Teaching English to their new Japanese friends gives them the perfect opportunity to witness about Jesus Christ. Starting with an established Christian church, they look for places and means to establish new communities of faith to people who do not know Jesus as their personal Savior.
Patty Beck
YWAM
Patty was in high school when she drove from Canada to East Texas with young friends to attend ‘camp’ one summer. The missionary boot camp type place that she found was not the fun place she anticipated. However, Patty “found God” at YWAM – and wanted more. In 1985, just out of high school, she returned to YWAM to work in many capacities – including communication and graphic design. Now she oversees Operations and manages the people who work in hospitality, the kitchen, maintenance and more. What does she like best? Guiding outreach teams to places around the world in order to be a disciple of Christ.
Katherine Ewing
YWAM
Katherine has been serving as a missionary for Youth With a Mission for many years. She has developed projects and events that mobilize thousands of people into national and international relief. She has been instrumental in establishing permanent centers in Mongolia, Haiti, Azerbaijan and in the inner cities of Dallas, Chicago and New Orleans. As director of the Donor & Public Relations Department, she helps generate the much-needed prayers, personnel and financial support for missions around the world.
Christy and Chris Hill
Program for Humanitarian Aid
Christy and Chris serve as directors for the faith-based nonprofit Program for Humanitarian Aid (PHA). PHA is focused on serving older orphans and those in need of humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Since 2014 Chris and Christy have served full-time as directors and overseers of the work both in Ukraine and in America. After 11 years of marriage and successful careers in secular jobs, God placed this ministry on their hearts. Both Texas A&M graduates, they reside in Texas and travel to Ukraine three times a year. Their time is split between serving in Ukraine and sharing this ministry with others in the U.S. PHA is proud to be a Ukrainian-run ministry. Through day centers in three Ukrainian cities, PHA teaches Bible lessons, life skills and surrounds those they serve with Ukrainian Christian mentors. PHA’s Ukrainian Ministry Partners strive to help those they serve make the transition from orphanage life into successful Christian adults. To learn more about how PHA serves, visit ProgramForHumanitarianAid.org.
Janice Johnson
YWAM
After coming to Texas from Pensacola, Florida, in the late 1980s, Janice joined the ministry team at YWAM in 1990. From that time forward she has quietly shared her many talents with hundreds of God’s children training to spread the Gospel. Now a Marvin UMC member, she refers to her main job at YWAM, computer technology, as a “behind-the-scenes job that is not as spectacular as the mission field.”
Chris and Debbie Lascelles
YWAM
Since the early 1990s Debbie and Chris have served as missionaries with Youth With a Mission. A nurse by trade, Debbie is the director of Mercy Works and travels around the world to offer disaster relief to countries affected by natural disasters, war or famine. Chris is from New Zealand and offers team leadership for ministry project oversight at the base in Garden Valley. Their approach to helping others: training and discipleship, evangelism, Mercy Ministry (aka Mercy Works).
Anastasie and John-Claude Mouditou
Youth With a Mission
Jean-Claude and Anastasie Mouditou are familiar faces at Marvin. They have been members for the past eight years. They arrived in the United States from the Congo after serving on Mercy Ships. Jean-Claude has been working on additional college degrees at SFA in the area of agriculture. After completing those degrees, he was accepted to go to multiple Youth With a Mission schools. He has completed his training and is now an official YWAM missionary in the area of agricultural development.
Alfred Njau
Amazing Grace in Tanzania, Africa
After attending Perkins School of Theology at SMU, Rev. Njau recently graduated from Africa University Seminary in Zimbabwe. He is spreading the gospel in a part of the world where there are few Christians. He has been appointed to plant a new church in Bunju, Dar es Salaam, near the east coast in Tanzania, Africa. He’s already chosen a name for this new place of worship: Amazing Grace United Methodist Church. His first two parishioners will be his wife, Anna, and their daughter, Keren. Planting a new church is difficult, but Rev. Njau said, “I believe to God everything is possible.”
Rev. Paul Renjithan
Bombay, India
Paul is the pastor of two Methodist Churches in Mumbai, India, and the director of the Marvin Methodist Center which helps the impoverished people in the slums of Mumbai. A close relationship that began more than 35 years ago with Rev. Paul’s father, Rev. Saba Renjithan, continues today as the Center provides training, education, tutoring, health care and daycare for people trying to make a new way of life.
Rev. Maxim Yurchenko
Tomsk UMC
Information is coming soon.
