Stories of Mission

VMMissions Hosts Prayer as Mission Seminar

VMMissions workers Michael and Ruthy Hershey led a seminar on October 17 and 18 focused on engaging prayer as the foremost tool given to us by which to engage in God’s mission and see God’s purposes unfold in our lives and in our world.

Bike Shenandoah Riders Pedal in Memory of Steve Leaman

On a crisp September morning, the largest number of riders in Bike Shenandoah’s history rode in memory of Steve Leaman, a beloved former principal, educator, and VMMissions staff member. The 133 riders pedaled to raise money for six organizations.

Motorcycles Go the Distance for Missions

In September, 24 motorcycle riders covered a total of 419 miles in support of the ministries of VMMissions. Despite ominous skies, the first group left Harrisonburg early Friday morning, and met up with other riders at Powhatan Mennonite Church.

VMMissions Announces Stephen R. Leaman Memorial Endowment for Missions

VMMissions is honored to announce to the public the Stephen R. Leaman Memorial Endowment for Missions, which will benefit three areas of ministry.

Worker Profile: Dan and Mary Hess

Dan and Mart serve in the town of Milot, Albania, where they focus on building relationships to lead people to Jesus. They are involved in children’s ministry, discipling new believers, and training emerging leaders.

Call to Prayer: Cherishing What God Speaks

“In our 14 years of our marriage, we have moved 14 times, not to mention all the transitions each time we came back to the US for home ministry assignments,” Ruthy Hershey writes. “God reminds me that we have not only survived all of this transition, but have been able to thrive.”

Prepared in Cusco for Service in Virginia

Hannah’s identity and understanding of the world and the gospel are forever changed by the opportunity she had to grow up as a TCK in Cusco, Peru. “Before leaving, I was given a say in this decision to move. Making this choice at age seven deepened the degree to which I took on the role of missionary.”

A World United Under God’s Love

I have had the blessing of serving on a few mission trips and have also assisted in after-school tutoring. I realize now that the fire to serve others was sparked as others invested in me and my community. I strive to see others as God sees us—as one body of Christ, as being equal.

For Different Seasons Blow Different Winds

Oftentimes it seems that we blot out our most important identification, our foundation: we are children of God. The fact that I am a TCK no longer seems to weigh on me. I will encounter misunderstandings because of it, but I have a greater purpose and longing that my heart seeks after.

Thankful for a Life of Paradoxes

I like being a TCK because I get to see and do things a lot of people don’t get to. For example, I have learned to do Thai dancing and to cook Thai food. I have made friends who live in many countries. But sometimes I don’t like being a TCK because I don’t really fit in anywhere.

Joy and Mourning

Growing up as a TCK, I experienced a lot of opposites. I would feel excited when we moved to new places, yet I felt sad about all the things I had to give up, sometimes forever. The window is symbolic of the lives of the people around me that were opened to me because of my TCK experience.

Anna and the Life-Giving High Five

The game of the street in Central Asia was urtganiki, which consists of “ball dodging and life swapping.” Whether the teammate I high-five back into the game does well or poorly, we feel connected more deeply because of the life-exchange. Similarly when we reflect on Jesus giving us his life, we feel more connected to him.

The Children Who Ask, “Who Am I?”

Third Culture Kids (TCKs) are uniquely formed and called to serve. Having grown up in Thailand, our daughters are TCKs. They are convinced of the reality and relevance of Jesus, and they are well-positioned for witness in the intercultural settings that abound in our world today.

VMMissions Announces Two Staff Promotions

VMMissions announces the promotions of Abe Hartzler to Associate Director of Advancement and Tom Yoder to Ministry Coach, with a particular focus on the Balkans. Both are current VMMissions staff members called to take on new or expanded roles.

Confessing Our Complicity and Committing to Change

At a recent prayer time, several staff members gave voice to our collective confession for complicity in systemic injustice and racism. We share this prayer with you as a statement of our ongoing need for God’s mercy and transformation.

Coronavirus Sparks Responses of Compassion and Creativity at VMMissions

The last three months of the coronavirus pandemic have introduced unimagined challenges and tragedy to the entire world community. It has also unearthed deep wells of adaptability, creativity and compassion. This is certainly the story at VMMissions.

MWC Global Church Sharing Fund Responds to Pandemic Needs

Mennonite World Conference has invited Anabaptist mission and service partners to coordinate their financial response to COVID-19 hardships experienced by member churches around the world.

A Front Row Seat to the Gospel’s Power

The power of the gospel is this: that the unlovable are loved, the irredeemable are redeemed, the disinherited are adopted, the faithless are made faithful, the wicked are made pure, and the unqualified are made participants. This is Kyle’s story.

Tracing the Trail of Forgiveness

God is calling Bethany Tobin to both teach and walk out Jesus’ humble yet powerful message of forgiveness as she serves in Thailand. She prays, “Use my mistakes Lord – make a fool of me – so that the power of your gospel can be revealed.” She shares these glimpses.

Worker Profile: Elena Buckwalter de Satalaya

Elena and her husband Freddy are working with the Iglesia Cristiana Menonita, in Iquitos, Peru, focusing mostly on bringing young people on an island community to a personal relationship with God. They teach basic classes and lead a children’s ministry and youth group.

Call to Prayer: Listening in the Hard Times

A week before arriving home to our slum, our neighborhood was flooded. Our homecoming was overwhelming—filled with culture shock, mourning lost possessions, and setting up our house again. Less than a month later, we all got typhoid. How do we pray in these times?

More Precious Than Rubies

God tells women that we are valuable to him, more precious than rubies. But in Montenegro, women are treated as if we are not worth much at all. So the women’s committee of our church decided to conduct our first-ever outreach event to show women their God-given value.

Sharing the Best We Have

Solange Tartari sees God working powerfully in Albania among people who are encountering the gospel for the first time. “We all have challenges in life. The least we can do is simply share the best we have in love for others: Jesus! He makes all the difference in us,” she writes.

The Gospel Seen on the Canvas of a Life

Within Nathan’s story I see many threads of God’s intervention. The presence of an active church. The word of God permeating Nathan’s heart from the voice of a faithful believer behind bars. The Holy Spirit bringing conviction, peace, hope, and forgiveness.

The Power of the Cross

Jesus’ sacrificial death undoes the curse of sin and makes new life possible for those who trust in him and surrender their lives in service to his kingdom. Like a seed that dies to be reborn as a fruitful new plant, death is the path to life in God’s economy.

Worker Profile: Mark and Sarah Schoenhals

We serve with Life Enrichment Church (LEC), a network of house churches in a wide rural area, with the goal of multiplying disciples of Jesus and house churches. We help disciple new believers, train emerging leaders, and advise and help sharpen the vision of existing leaders.

Call to Prayer: Soaking and Leaking

We knew that God had good plans for our neighbors in our South Asian Muslim neighborhood. We also knew intimately the hard details of their lives. We spent a lot of time praying and listening for a sense of God’s dreams for them and what God was specifically guiding us to do.

Keep Your Distance 5K Results

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Keep Your Distance 5K! Over six days, walkers and runners from around the world came together (virtually) and completed 232.5 miles while showing their support for VMMissions.

A New Roof for Rosa

When it became apparent that Rosa (name changed) needed a new roof on her house, church planter and pastor Armando Sanchez was ready to add his roofing skills to the energy already present in the Springdale and Waynesboro Mennonite churches.

In Honor of Lloyd Weaver, VMMissions’ Longest-Serving President, 1966-1979

Lloyd Weaver Jr., ninth president of Virginia Mennonite Missions, died on April 7, 2020, at age 96. Recognized as humble, strong, encouraging, committed and full of good humor, he was enthusiastic about missions and especially enjoyed visiting the missionaries on location.

Ken Horst Hired as Interim Development Associate

VMMissions has hired Ken Horst as Interim Development Associate, effective April 20. Ken served with the agency for over 30 years as both a mission worker and member of staff, most recently as Development Associate for four years before he retired in 2018.

Cloth Face Mask Goal Exceeded

VMMissions launched a drive for cloth face masks for four area poultry plants, with a goal of 1,500. Due to an incredible outpouring of support, we have exceeded this goal by 575 masks! Thank you to everyone who gave of their time, talent, and resources.

VMMissions Mourns the Loss of Steve Leaman

With great sadness we share the news that Steve Leaman, our dear coworker and brother, passed away suddenly on April 5. Steve was known as a hard-working and caring colleague, a lifelong learner, a devoted family man, and a faithful follower of Jesus.

Casey with items found in the trash pile

The Hands and Feet of Jesus

In the desperate tedium of a large refugee camp, we were entering a world where we would feel sorrow, joy, rage, exhaustion, frustration and happiness, all in a matter of a few hours. Every day. I have never felt more strongly that we were trying to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

VMMissions Launches Coronavirus Immigrant Care Fund

Many immigrant families depend on their weekly check for meeting the needs of their families. The present coronavirus emergency has left many families jobless or with their work hours reduced to a minimum. This fund is a way to share God’s love with our neighbors in need.

VMMissions Response to COVID-19

We are all living with upheaval and uncertainty due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Yet as followers of Jesus, we need not give in to fear or hopelessness. With that confidence in God, Virginia Mennonite Missions is taking a number of steps to respond to the coronavirus crisis.

30 Seconds That Threw Lezhë Into Chaos

On November 26, 2019, Albania a 6.4 magnitude earthquake and numerous aftershocks struck Albania. The church mobilized to provide help. “I see that the Lord is revealing himself to the lost. We pray that God will be glorified and that there will be lasting fruit for God’s kingdom in Albania,” Rafael writes.

Alisha and a child at the clinic in Uganda

What Does It Mean to “Do Good?”

We were ostensibly doing good work in the community, but the lack of transformative spiritual engagement left us feeling empty, dissatisfied, and questioning. This desire to see gospel transformation take root began, however, in a startling and unforeseen way.

Bold Humility: Mission in the Way of Jesus

Contemporary attitudes toward mission are much different than the ones that gave rise to VMMissions one hundred years ago. Today, the claim that Jesus is Lord offends pluralistic sensibilities, but is sharing the gospel inherently oppressive? Not if we follow the Lord’s example.

Gratitude to God Funds Mission

The early model of centralized funding depended on donors entrusting their God-given resources to the mission agency to use in accordance with its priorities. Later it became clear that donors wanted to give where they had involvement. A paradigm shift was needed.

Getting On Board With Business

Business and practical professional skills are vehicles enabling the gospel to cross into places closed to traditional mission initiatives but open for business. The call is going out for people who love Jesus and believe that the marketplace is a place for the good news of the gospel.

USA Ministries: A Story of Missionaries and Migrants

God knows how to weave good stories together to create something new and beautiful in another time and place. In this story, the puzzle pieces are missionaries and migrants, the places are Honduras and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and the time will unfold in the telling.

Martin Rhodes celebrates a birthday in Mexico

An Examen: God, Where Have You Been Present?

Now in our fourth decade of short-term missions, what have we learned at VMMissions? Are short-term mission experiences about rendering a service or surrendering to Christ? Martin Rhodes shares his own story of how a short-term assignment in Mexico shifted his focus from doing to being.

Jason Rhodes Showalter to Join Staff as Global Ministries Director

Jason Rhodes Showalter was hired as Global Ministries Director, effective February 3, 2020. He has 15 years of experience as a cross-cultural worker with a sister Anabaptist agency, where his roles roles included orientation, mentoring, and developing strategic vision.

Caleb Benner teaches at Lezha Academic Center in Albania

A Dream, a Need, a Gift: the Launch of tranSend

Over 100 persons have explored their sense of call to mission through tranSend since the program began in 2005. What were the dreams and needs behind this one-year mission internship program, and how did it become a reality?

Extending the Reach to Every Nation, Tribe and Tongue

In recent years, VMMissions has placed greater priority on sending workers to unreached people groups. Thanks to the Lord of the harvest, dedicated and creative VMMissions workers are living incarnationally among some of the fifty largest unreached people groups in the world.

2020 Year End Financial Goal Exceeded

VMMissions is delighted to report that we exceeded our year-end financial goal of $100,000 by almost $7,000. Thank you! We are grateful to God and to everyone who has prayed, given financially, and supported our work in many ways.

The Walls Came Tumbling Down: Our Entrance Into Albania

When the walls came down, “We were swept along, praising God for opportunities! We could hardly keep up with it,” Willard Eberly exclaimed. An isolated nation after a forty-five year communist regime, Albania opened in 1991 to the outside world and to the gospel of Jesus.

Will You Go? Our Expansion into the Caribbean

Twila Y. Brunk’s book, Together in the Lord, is an engaging account of the first twenty-five years of the Jamaican Mennonite Church. The following recounts those beginnings, as well as the expansion of VMMissions’ work into Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

In Honor of Paul Timothy (PT) Yoder, 12th President of VMMissions

Paul Timothy Yoder, Sr., president of VMMissions from 1985 to 1990, died on December 16, 2019. He was 91. During his tenure, Paul envisioned VMMissions as a channel through which resources would be released for the purpose of expanding God’s kingdom.

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