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Stories of Mission

Explore mission themes in our quarterly magazine as workers tell stories of making disciples in the way of Christ.

Stay informed of all the latest VMMissions news.

Lewis and Cora Martin with Franca Ceraulo

From Virginia Into the Heart of Christendom

“I do not believe that it is above what we could expect, if the Lord tarries, that we would have a native Mennonite Church in Sicily,” wrote Truman Brunk in his report to the executive committee of the mission board upon his return from a visit to Sicily in 1950.

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Albania earthquake relief

Update: Albania Earthquake Relief Fund

VMMissions is delighted to report that the Albania Earthquake Relief Fund needs have been met! In 2019, VMMissions received $28,712 towards the expenses of a temporary shelter in Lezhë for 15 Roma families who lost their homes in Albania’s 6.4-magnitude earthquake.

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Future site of Calvary Community Church

Tidewater Virginia: Our Antioch

The ministry of the early church began in Jerusalem, but Antioch became an important mission center, similar to the way Tidewater, Virginia, became in the mid-20th century. What made that particular context so special? How did VMMissions promote greater faithfulness and fruitfulness there?

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John S Coffman

Beginnings: Called to the Mountains

In the early days, mission vision emerged at the district level of Virginia Mennonite Conference. Middle District was exemplary in mobilizing witness over the mountains into West Virginia. A steady stream of workers labored over the years, eventually giving birth to over a dozen churches.

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Centennial events

Catching the Wind of the Spirit: VMMissions Celebrates 100 Years

Hundreds gathered to celebrate the centennial year of Virginia Mennonite Missions. Leaders from partner church conferences were featured guests at events that included a reunion brunch, a banquet, an evening worship service, and a Sunday afternoon a cappella concert.

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Aaron M. Kauffman

One Hundred Years of Sharing Jesus with Neighbors Near and Far

This year marks 100 years of Virginia Mennonite Missions helping the church share Jesus with neighbors near and far. How did it all get started? What has God done through our work? Where might God be leading in the future?

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Carol Tobin

The River and the Sea: Making Sense of the Story

For one hundred years, VMMissions has existed to help the church know itself as sent. It is when we look back that we are best able to see an unfolding storyline that can then help us to orient toward our future. What do we see when we look back?

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Call to Prayer: No junior Holy Spirit for children!

By Priscilla Gnanamanickam Children don’t have a junior Holy Spirit.” This is what we were told by a missionary couple when we were young parents in India, as we were learning to listen to the voice of the Lord and follow him. “Encourage your children to listen to the voice of the Lord speaking, like…

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Melba Heatwole

Melba Heatwole, Longtime Mission Worker, Dies at 85

Melba Frances Kiser Heatwole, longtime mission worker in Jamaica and later Albania, passed away on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019, at her home following a stroke. She served in Jamaica for 20 years and for two years in Albania through Virginia Mennonite Missions.

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J.R. Briggs

VMMissions Cohosts Coaching Training Event with J.R. Briggs

Studies continue to reveal that leaders who participate in coaching are more effective and exhibit long-term vitality in their personal lives. A Coaching Training event with J.R. Briggs was co-hosted by VMMissions and Virginia Mennonite Conference, October 1-2, 2019.

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Friends at VBS in Trinidad

Family Treasure Hunting

As a child, I loved treasure hunts. Almost as fun as finding my treasure was continuing to search in order to hide the knowledge of the treasure from my siblings and to share in their joy when they found it. Discovery, amazement, wonder and joy are all markers of those who have discovered the kingdom of God made flesh.

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Carol Tobin

Family on Mission: God’s Business Over Busyness

My husband Skip and I believe that God will pour his life through us in dynamic ways as we take steps to integrate our family lives into the family life of God. One place where we see deep desire for this kind of integration is in a “family on mission” huddle that we host in our home.

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Laura Green with her children and Italian friends.

Not Here to Raise a Family?

Worker Shawn Green sees godly parenting as an integral part of bearing witness to the gospel in Termoli, Italy. “Because teachers, as well as neighbors, notice our parenting, we have had opportunities to speak into their lives,” he writes.

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Centennial celebration service

Sowing and Harvesting: VMMissions Kicks Off Centennial Celebration

On July 18, 2019, a crowd of over 450 gathered at Lindale Mennonite Church to kick off a series of events celebrating the 100-year history of VMMissions. The evening’s theme was “cultivating good soil,” based on Jesus’ parable in Mark 4:1-9.

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VMMissions Centennial Celebration Photos

VMMissions is celebrating one hundred years of equipping the church to share the good news with neighbors near and far. View images from the celebrations at Virginia Mennonite Conference Assembly on Thursday, July 18.

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Immanuel, God With Us!

Worker Raleigh offers tender reflections on the gift of God’s presence to their family as they offer a ministry of presence among their Muslim neighbors. “When we are overwhelmed by the need [for them] to know Jesus—we are thankful that Immanuel can make the way for them to believe.”

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Peg and Lee Martin

Worker Profile: Lee and Peg Martin

Lee and Peg Martin serve in McDowell County, West Virginia, as Location Coordinators with SWAP (Sharing With Appalachian People), an MCC program that bring volunteers to Appalachia to make homes safe, warm and dry and build relationships with local folks.

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Call to Prayer: Can Prayer Make Your Family Unique?

Our priority on prayer is guided by clear biblical principles. We emphasize the fact that God hears our prayers and that we can hear from him. But principles are not enough; we need to practice. Here are a few family-friendly prayer ideas that we have used to develop our family prayer life.

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Kids Club

Teachers: God’s Love in the Community

All Kids Club volunteers love the children who come, and there is something special about teachers who choose to be at Kids Club each week. They are experts at giving and receiving the love of God in our local communities who are competently leading both at school and at Kids Club.

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Nurturing the Faith of College Students

God awakened in me a dream for the dividing walls to be broken down and for all of us—university students and local members of congregations—to see each other as brothers and sisters in Christ, and for the unique gifts of these students to be nurtured for the sake of God’s kingdom.

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Jim Beachy, teacher at LAC

Seeds of Transformation

My primary purpose for being at LAC was to build relationships. Teaching my subject area well was important; but the real substance of our time there was in the one-on-one conversations with students, other teachers, and persons in the community.

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Dr. Aaron M. Kauffman

Aaron M. Kauffman Graduates with Doctor of Ministry Degree

Dr. Aaron M. Kauffman, president of VMMissions since 2014, graduated with a Doctor of Ministry degree from Asbury Theological Seminary on May 18, 2019. His dissertation uncovered five key strategies of local churches that are successfully engaging young adults.

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Aaron M. Kauffman

The School of Obedience

Discipleship is about the most important kind of learning possible, learning to follow after Jesus. Yet too often, we see it as an add-on rather than an essential part of faith. If discipleship were only a matter of acquiring information, perhaps we would be less inclined to neglect it.

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Michael prays

Seeing the Harvest that Jesus Sees

With one sweep of my husband’s eye on our garden, he sees past investment, present challenges, and future promise. I learn a lot when I ask him to show me what he sees. This is what we do when we pray. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, we ask, “Lord, what do you see?”

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Sowing Seeds Close to Home

Workers in the U.S. are seeing transformation firsthand as God’s activity permeates local communities among people of every background. Seeds of faith are being planted among inmates in the local jail and middle schoolers are being engaged through Kids Club.

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“Hello, My Friend”

I came because I thought that I could do something for God. But I soon realized that God brought me to Greece so that he could do something in me. The stories of bravery and courage I heard have impacted me and changed the way that I see the world.

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Aaron M. Kauffman

Expect a Harvest

We can get so preoccupied with our own needs that we can’t see the bounty in God’s global harvest. What if we allowed our hunger to drive us into the grain fields of the world? Can we trust that Jesus is already there, beckoning us to reap with joy what others have sown?

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For Such a Time as This

Business for transformation (B4T) is a way of opening doors for the gospel in areas that might otherwise be closed. A water filter production in Southeast Asia opens doors of opportunity, and Lady Latte is opening doors for women in Kosovo.

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A Harvest in the Hard Places

Jesus exhorted his disciples to open their eyes and see the fields. Workers in Asia and Europe share stories of potential harvests in difficult soil, and of immense needs. Is God inviting you to serve?

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Rafael and Tartari family

Worker Profile: Rafael and Solange Tartari

Rafael pastors the local church in Lezhë, focusing on evangelism, discipleship, and training local people to be future leaders in the church. They regularly make contact with people who have not yet heard the good news of the gospel.

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Staff who worked with VMMissions accreditation.

VMMissions Short-term Programs Now Accredited

VMMissions is excited to announce that it has passed the accreditation process with Standards of Excellence in Short-term Missions (SOE) and is now a fully accredited member.

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Baptisms on the beach in Thailand

Grants Received for Thailand Anabaptist Gathering

Anabaptist believers from Thailand and Laos gathered together in Chonburi, Thailand, for a rich time of lively worship, fellowship and interactive teaching at the 4th Thailand Anabaptist Gathering (TAG), October 8-12, 2018.

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Dave Stutzman and friend Uwe

New Ways of Being Church

Instead of asking, “Why aren’t people coming to our church? Where is the younger generation? What is the future of the church?” we need to be asking, “Where is God at work? How can we participate in what God is doing in this context? What are we inviting people to be part of?”

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Lynn Suter

A Culture of Multiplication

If you were asked, “What are the irreducible minimums of the church?” what would you say? An assembly of some number? What number? A pattern of assembling? What’s the pattern and what mission and values would it reflect?

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Carol Tobin

From Anywhere to Anyone

At first glance, the idea of all of us “going” sounds like a perfect recipe for chaos! But, somehow, this is what the Holy Spirit does when he gets a hold of us. Our hearts enlarge. Our vision expands. We go beyond our culturally comfortable borders.

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Called to Go: Norma’s Story

With the opening of the Joshua Center in 2007, I began working with the Roma people. We began with 25 students, preparing children for enrollment in school. What began as a pre-school now includes an after-school program, a weekly girls’ Bible club, and a monthly mothers’ meeting.

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Preserved for a Purpose

Francisco and Juanita came to the U.S. as asylum seekers from Honduras. Now God is using them as church planters in Madrid, Spain. “God has preserved us for his sovereign purposes. We did not understand God’s purpose for us, but now we do.”

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A Tailor-Made Niche

With his type of design work, James (name changed) gets to continue in this “cultural mandate” of developing this language and while doing it, share with his Muslim colleagues this beautiful heritage of how Christianity uniquely uplifts languages.

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Aaron M. Kauffman

Work as Witness

Too often we as Christians have adopted our culture’s divide between the spiritual and the secular. Except for paid ministry, we rarely think of work as spiritual. The Bible, however, makes no such distinction between spiritual and secular.

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Eastside Church pastors and workers

A Shared Heartbeat for Mission

If the church is made up of disciples, then everything we are part of should replicate. Peter Eberly, pastor of Eastside Church, has missional dreams that from the congregation would come churches in many locations. That replication must begin with individual disciples.

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Kids Club event

Local Mission on the Map

Skip Tobin, Ministry Coach for USA workers, is excited about all that is happening locally: interactions with workers, requests for tranSend interns from local pastors, hearing from district leaders about their missional hopes, and working at discipleship through huddles.

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Aaron M. Kauffman

The Best is Yet to Come

It’s easy to look at the present landscape of the church in North America and get discouraged. Nearly all denominations are in decline. Where are the streams that God is causing to spring up in what feels like a spiritual wasteland? I see at least three streams of renewal.

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Sarah Showalter

Call to Prayer: Teaching Children to Pray

As believers, we are tasked with the job of bringing the little children to Jesus. We can spend all the time in the world teaching children about God, but if we don’t teach them how to relate to God, we’re not doing any better than the disciples who tried to shoo the children away.

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Baptism

A Knock on the Door, Seeking and Finding

“I believe that Jesus is God, and I want to be a Jesus follower.” I couldn’t believe my ears as Yousif prayed a beautiful prayer of repentance, expressing a humble need of Christ. How could this be happening? A Muslim young man, coming to faith so quickly?

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Clymers with friends

Sharing the Good News in Switzerland

I wasn’t sure if my writing and work on spirituality in the United States would connect with the people of Europe, but the loneliness, brokenness and hunger for a deeper relationship with God is as evident here as at home.

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Aaron M. Kauffman

Lifestyle Evangelism

Do we have the courage to live such radical lives of obedience to Jesus that we stand out from our culture, and perhaps even suffer for it? Do we have the humble confidence to bear witness to the gospel among our family members, neighbors, and coworkers?

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Sowing Seeds of Good News

A number of workers and staff share holy moments of gospel seeds being sown in the everyday, right here and now. How will God use these interactions to draw people from his diverse creation back to himself?

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Swing at House of Hope

In Word and With Power

In a slum community in a large Asian city, Anita and Yosiah have gained their community’s trust through deeds of love. Now they ask, “How do we proclaim the gospel holistically? People know we live here and do what we do because we are followers of Jesus.”

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Jason Wagner, chaplain

Loving Our Neighbors in Jail

Jason has seen firsthand the deep hunger for connection to God and loving fellowship that inmates have in the Rockingham Regional Jail. Since being appointed as a VMMissions worker to serve as jail chaplain, he has been introduced to the lives of many men who are serving sentences there.

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Sarah Showalter

Call to Prayer: Praying Together

Sarah Showalter’s “team” for the last several years has been a small prayer group of young adults from her congregation, Ridgeway Mennonite Church. After joining another couple for an evening of prayer, “we weren’t intending to start a prayer group, but then we were hooked.”

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