The Kenyons are missionaries to the Youth Culture of Panama and present the gospel to students in the high schools of Panama City. They are launching a Youth Church that will establish a model to other churches in Panama of how to incorporate the emerging generation into their community without requiring them to meet an unstated list of rules and regulations in order to enter the premises or participate in the church community. This church will also provide a place where Panamanian students can retreat to feel safe, valued, and heard…a REFUGE. This REFUGE will house and rehabilitate abused girls within the context of the church.
The Kenyons began their missions career in 2006 as Missionaries in Training in El Salvador with Don & Terri Triplett of King’s Castle Ministries. They did evangelism and discipleship training with young adults. Upon the end of their training term, they answered the request to take their experience to minister to the youth of Panama as fully appointed missionaries.
The call to missions came to both Gerritt & Tara individually when they were each in high school on short-term missions trips. They met years later in college and joined their hearts for missions and left for the field upon graduating from North Central University.
Tara Kenyon - Wife
Malachi Kenyon - Son
Titus Kenyon - Son
We have been appointed as church planting missionaries to join an established team in Nara, Japan. Japan is a country of 125M inhabitants, where only .5% of the population is Christian, and the number of believers and missionaries has been only shrinking for the last 30 years. Also, over 70% of Japanese church leaders are over the age of 70, which means that they are desperately hurting for the next generation to rise up and carry the torch of the gospel to their neighbors and fellow citizens. In our first year and a half in Japan, we have engaged most heavily in language learning and partnership with our local church, Nara New Life, who have been mentoring us in our future venture to start a church in the surrounding area. Our main focuses have been ministry through the vivacious young family community in our town: children's ministry, gymnastics class, local play room, parks, and soon Kaia will be joining our neighborhood pre-school. In addition we have been investing in relationships with a number of other individuals long-term, leading worship, and visiting Japanese churches around the country sharing our testimonies and building a network of national believers. Our current short term goals now: Continue language learning for another 2 years, 2024 begin surveying neighborhoods in summer for church plant (move spring 2025 to target area), establish parent relationships at Kaia's preschool.
River Valley 500. We minister to the people of Thailand. We focus on Thai nationals who are discipling other people and then we help them. We also look for any lost or broken person that God brings into our life and we minister to them.
25,000 Japanese commit suicide every year. Yet in spite of this God is moving among young people. In Vietnam, Cambodia, and Myanmar their is a strong church planting movement evolving. Our time there will be to equip and empower church planters with a means to develop sustainable income.
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.
We travel and preach anywhere God opens a door so the context is large.
John focuses on apostolic work on the University of Minnesota campus (most recently with fraternities) and is an associate pastor at Sojourn Campus Church in Minneapolis. Jolene is currently seeking strategic direction on how to reach the U of M arts community as an independent choreographer.
Mark and Anjali are located in Swaziland, a small, landlocked country within South Africa and bordered by Mozambique.
Indonesia is a majority Islamic country with about 83.3% of the population practicing the Islamic faith and 70% of the population unreached. They are part of the 10/40 window and Indonesians that convert to Christianity may face being ostracized from their family and be pressured into isolation and taking on verbal abuse. It is legal to be a Christian In Indonesia however Missionaries often face oppression from radical Islamic parties when planting or getting permission to build a church.
We have identified 14 strategic nations throughout Africa that will serve as hubs to train and sent teams to reach and disciple the universities of the surrounding nations. As the training Hub for campus ministry in Africa, we hope to have a viable disciple making movement on every major African university resulting in churches planted among Africa's most unreached. Our target nations are: Chad, South Sudan/Sudan, Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa, Angola, Gabon, DRC, Tanzania, Malawi.
The Lashway's serve as the Team Leader Overseer for the Swahili Zone of East Africa, primarily engaging with our AGWM missionaries and national church leaders in Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda. Currently, 18 countries in Africa do not have any AGWM personnel and 12 more have only one missionary unit. In an effort to help the emerging churches on the continent, they have been asked by AGWM Africa to launch a Basecamp Missionary Development Center in Moshi, Tanzania to help interested people from the U.S. to Discover Africa, Discern their Call, and Develop their Skills in Cross Cultural Ministry. We will be the feeder program for East Africa developing teams of new missionaries for not only Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda, but also future efforts into planting the church in South Sudan and Eritrea as well as other nations in the region. In addition to my TLO responsibilities and launching a Basecamp, I am also the Executive Secretary for the Africa Assemblies of God Alliance serving the continent along side the AAGA Chairman Dr. Barnabas Mtokambali, promoting church planting, African missions, leadership development, and church growth across the continent.
As of June 1st, 54,325,725 Gospel Presentations, 2,759,142 Evangelism Responses, and 458,621 Discipleship Connection. All in 242 countries and territories, as tracked by Google.
Dareth and Thida are working to plant churches among the unreached Khmer people of Cambodia. They are using multiple approaches to accomplish this goal, including a compassion ministry that focuses on children through school and feeding programs.