John the Missionary - Taking the Gospel Overseas

John and Sarah have been married for nearly 34 years. They have three married children, three grandchildren, and their family also has a foster baby, Caitlin, that they are raising. Both John and Sarah are missionary kids: John in Argentina and Sarah in Kenya. They are growth group leaders and are on the counseling team. They help in leadership training, evangelism, and disciple-making. John is employed with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina. He is the strategy coordinator over the Triangle where he mobilizes and partners with churches to reach the lost. Sarah’s parents had a little clinic in Nairobi and this experience has led her to study nursing and become a registered nurse. 

They talked about their struggles as parents and how their eldest son was diagnosed with cerebral palsy and their second son was diagnosed with cancer at 10 months. This derailed John and Sarah and they started to question God. It was years later where they had actually come to a point where they thought that maybe the Lord was just asking for their obedience. The Lord used that experience to shape their characters and caused them to yield completely, and allowed them to grow in their marriage. They believe that that experience prepared them more for harder things later. 

John and Sarah also shared their experiences as missionaries in South Asia. John had the privilege of bringing together people from five or six different people groups who loved the Lord. He also brought in a music missionary and ethnomusicologist and they did a workshop to teach them to write songs in their own language with their own style. They coached their own teams and personnel on the field of what it looks like to involve churches more effectively. Sarah, on the other hand, used her knowledge as a nurse to implement health strategies to get into villages and to demonstrate the love of Christ. So she became the health strategies coach for their personnel to help more and more teams to do that in the fall.

John believes that God is still calling people out to go and take the gospel overseas. There are many world religions that are working out their faith. And yet we as Christians have been given an incredible gift of grace by our salvation and grace. Recent research has shown that one of the fastest-growing segments of the Christian faith is among Asians because they are getting exposure now. John shared that one exciting thing for him is the opportunity to work with a lot of different churches from a lot of different ethnicities. He saw the challenge to go out to more churches of other languages and intersect with our traditional brothers and sisters. 

If you are in the Triangle area and want to contact John and his team, just click on this link

____________

Global Hope India: For over 20 years we have been watching God radically transform thousands of Americans & Indian Nationals through missions. We’ve taken nearly 1,000 Americans on short-term mission trips to India. We work with 12 long-term indigenous church planting partners located in North, South, East, & West mainland India as well as Northeast India. We empower the Church in India to make Christ known through leadership, child, & village development projects. Global Hope India is a federally recognized 501(c)3 nonprofit organization located in Morrisville, North Carolina. All gifts are tax-deductible. More about GHI.

More about Living the Dream Podcast.

Meet Pastor Kevin: Pastor Kevin is Founder and Executive Director of Global Hope India and your host for Living the Dream Podcast. He’s a poor kid from rural North Carolina, but get this… He just returned from his 50th trip to India in 20 years. If he doesn’t yet hold the Guinness Book of World Records for the most trips to India then he’s got to be close. He’s flown over a million miles to 27 different countries. He’s taken nearly 1,000 people on mission trips to India. Global Hope India has seen thousands of Indian Nationals and Americans radically transformed by God through missions. The miracle continues! More about Pastor Kevin.

GHI Resources & Contact Info:
Resource Center
GHI Facebook
GHI Instagram: @globalhopeindia
GHI Twitter: @globalhopeindia
Email GHI