Joanne Oftedahl teaches and serves as Student Missions Advisor at Immanuel Bible College, Cebu Philippines. She preaches, teaches, and helps provide resources for evangelism and discipleship in local churches of Cebu and neighboring Islands.
Joanne’s first mission’s experience was a two-year assignment to the Philippines. She recalls this as a fantastic time of growth in faith gained while serving in different ministries. During that time she taught in Bible College, conducted children’s and youth ministries, outreach and discipleship in secular colleges, ministry to patients in hospitals, evangelism seminars for nursing students, preaching and teaching in local churches.
At age sixteen, Joanne sensed God’s calling and she committed her life to Him; wherever He may lead. During the following two years, God continued to draw her closer and gave her a passion for missions. During her years at North Central Bible College, God confirmed His call to missions and put a special love in her heart for Asia. Joanne has served in the Philippines for 25 years.
Mark and Janie have served as missionaries in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, since 1994, where they have been involved in university campus ministry, leadership development, and church planting. Through their “Churches for Churches” program, the Durenes are helping with new church plants in 5 cities, including Teung, where River Valley Church partnered to launch the church. Currently, they are helping to train several other potential church planters, and also serve as mentors to many other pastors throughout the northern Thailand area. In addition, they are the directors of the Global University Thai’s second Bachelor’s program, where they are training current and future Thai ministers. Mark serves as the AGMF Thailand Country Moderator, as well as on several national boards, including Evangelical Fellowship of Thailand (Northern region); Every Home for Christ, Thailand; Thailand AG Northern Region Board of Presbyters; and others. Janie writes Sunday school curriculum for several churches and directs the children’s program at a church in Chiang Mai.
We stay up to date with information from the Joshua Project and from Evangelical/Pentecostal groups based in Ethiopia by which we can see the numbers of languages, ethnic peoples, churches that have been planted by the major Pentecostal groups in country (including the EAG and the Full Gospel Believers Church of Ethiopia), UPGs in Ethiopia and our surrounding neighbors.
England is the 4th most secular nation in the world, with close to 70% claiming to be non religious.
River Valley 500. We serve under Dareth & Thida Ly in Siem Reap, Cambodia for 2 years. They have been in Cambodia since the mid-90s working with children and young adults. They help run 3 schools and provide a place (The New Dream Center) for children from the floating village to live who want to continue their education past 6th grade. By living at The New Dream Center, these children are able to attend the junior high and high school across the street and have access to additional English and computer classes through Dareth & Thida’s ministry. They also hold a Sunday church service at The New Dream Center. In the late 70’s, after the Vietnam War, the Khmer Rouge killed roughly a 1/4 of the population of Cambodia. Anyone with a higher education or held a position of leadership were killed. Families were separated and taken to working camps, where they endured extremely long, hard days working in rice fields. Many were killed just to set an example of what would happen if you disobeyed and many others died from the harsh working conditions, long days and lack of food. This event has had a huge impact on the Cambodian people as they continue to deal with the effects of such trauma from PTSD to the lack of knowledge of what a healthy family unit should look like. They deal with a struggling economy, widespread corruption, the highest HIV rate in Asia and some of the highest rates of child sex trafficking in the world. They have prayed that God would use them; that he would reveal His plan for their lives and in February of 2016, He did just that. God has called them to be missionaries to Cambodia. Never in their wildest dreams did they think this is what He would have in store for them. God has given them a calling and theyre simply trying to be obedient servants; vessels to be used by Him to share His glory and truth to the people of Cambodia.
River Valley 500. Amada is full time staff in the health care ministry at Youth With A Mission in Perth, Australia. She leads the Birth Attendant School, an 11 month training program that trains missionaries to be birth attendants in developing nations. Part of this school is an 8 month field assignment, where Amada leads teams of students and trains them in vital areas of mother and child health in pregnancy, birth and postpartum, working in low resourced hospitals throughout Africa and Asia.
Jamie and Tasha Kemp are passionately engaged with Unreached People Groups (UPGs), working to establish a Christian presence in the unreached areas of Indonesia. The Kemps’ main focus is campus ministry- reaching Muslim University students. Jamie also trains churches on how to start local youth ministries.
Tod and Andrea Chapin are pioneering a ministry in the capital city of Edinburgh in Scotland. They minsiter to university students and young families seeing lives transformed by the power of Jesus and giving the spiritually hungry an encounter with the living God.
Our primary focus is both with the international community and the Spanish native. The International Church of Barcelona (icbspain.com) is a church home to over 70 nationalities, which reflects the diversity of Barcelona! We minister in both English (for the expat and foreigner) and in Spanish (for the local).