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.
I’m serving all over the continent of Africa. At the moment, leadership has asked me to temporarily base out of Springfield with the Africa’s Hope team here until a decision is made about where on the continent a new Africa’s Hope team will be based. Until then, I’m traveling regularly to different countries around Africa to teach, meet with church leaders and translation teams, and be involved with a variety of other ministry.
Most of the people that we minister to come from very simple educational/vocational backgrounds with low to modest income. Many of them live in rural areas or low-income neighborhoods in various cities. Some even live in very remote Amazonian villages with limited services (i.e., electricity, access to medical care, etc.). Even though they may be “simple” folks by our American standards, we know they are full of potential!
The Gruetzmachers work directly with Hispanics here in the United States and within several countries in Latin America. Their main focus is to develop leaders, and their schedule is filled with ministry to Hispanic churches; coaching pastors and leaders; leading mission trips with Hispanic students; holding retreats for men, women, and youth; leadership training; and working with 2 Institutes for Church Planters.
Jean coaches worldwide church leaders in Asia, Africa and the U.S.A. on how to conceptualize, plant, cultivate and multiply churches and ministries that are indigenous in nature. She makes sure to do this in ways that are culturally relevant, self-functioning, self-determining, self-supporting, self-propagating and self-giving, and that promote a healthy self-image and a healthy community-image.
Proclaiming Jesus to the hockey world through chapel programs and hockey camps! Our family is currently serving the Minnesota hockey community at the youth level!
Estonia is a small country, about 1/5 the size of Minnesota with just 1.3 million people. About 400,000 of them live in Tallinn, the city we live and work in. Estonia is one of the least religious countries in the world. Only 14 percent believe religion has any influence on their lives, and less than 1 percent are Evangelical Christian (Pentecostal, Baptist, or Methodist). After centuries of various occupations, Estonia was established as a country in 1918, but Soviet and Nazi occupations would follow. Estonia regained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The country is around 70 percent Estonian and 20 percent Russian, although some border cities are up to 90 percent Russian. Despite such a difficult past, Estonia leads the way technologically. Skype, Pipedrive, and Wise were all born in Estonia, and it's not uncommon to see delivery robots pass by on the sidewalk.
The town of Garissa, Kenya is not too far from the Somali border and although a small town, there are a number of unreached people groups in and around the area. Most of the unreached tribes adhere to some form of Islam, but there is a definite stratification of class and religion within the town between the ethnic Kenyan's and the ethnic Somali's. Our site leader and his family have been in the town for 17 years working on building a small farm in the desert out side of town with modern desert farming techniques alongside an unreached tribe. Through the farm work and bringing medical doctors to this unreached tribe he has built up trust and respect in the community and has been teaching bible studies for the past 17 plus years. We would be joining his team but not necessarily the farm work as there are other unreached people groups in the area that also need to hear the gospel and can be reached through different methods that we plan to join/create.
Indonesia is the fourth most populated nation in the world; approximately 266 million people in which more than 80% are followers of Islam. Though with social and political persecution, Indonesian Constitution allows freedom of 5 major religion including Protestant churches. They allowed the Indonesian church to invite missionaries with religious visas, which is invaluable for evangelism.
Roger and Debbi Audorff want to help Mexico become a sending nation for missions, and they believe that with proper training, this will be able to happen. While the immediate spiritual battle is with the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses—Roger and Debbi believe that the Catholics in Monterrey could realize that God’s Word is for them to live out in their daily lives. However, idol worship of Guadalupe is prevalent in the city among the Catholic population, and the Audorffs are praying for the spirit of idolatry to be broken by the name of Jesus. Monterrey is also home to much poverty and has had many recent problems with drug trafficking.