Mark and Lona's September Newsletter (PDF file)
Lona and I have always felt God’s call to ministry, particularly to missions. On family vacations to England, Scotland and Wales, we would visit churches, large and small, and read the memorials. Most of them would say “To the glory of God” and talk about the wonderful things that person and/or family had done for God and country, yet the service attendance would be very small. In cathedrals that could hold 2000 – 3000 people, the whole service of less than 50 people would be held up in the choir loft so that the tourists would not be disturbed. God was opening our hearts and eyes to the spiritual climate of Western Europe.
We never felt that God was calling us to those countries, so we kept plodding along: me going to Brasil and Lona and I going to Croatia. We then decided to go to Ireland and we prayed that God would give us sensitive hearts to a certain place or places if we were to be called there. In June of 2006, we spent 3 weeks touring Ireland and at the end of the trip, we compared notes and had the same two towns in mind.
After talking to the IMB and being told that Ireland and Western Europe was not their mission focus and we would not be sent there, we started looking for another mission agency and found CrossWorld. CrossWorld has been around for 79 years with over 400 missionaries in at least 36 geographic locations around the world. CrossWorld believes in the team approach to missions and has a team in Ireland. One of the towns Lona and I felt a burden for is Killarney in Kerry County and CrossWorld has a couple working with a church there. The goal is to join them in that work before they decide to retire. Our whole family went to Candidate Orientation (CO) in June, 2009 and were appointed as missionaries at the end of the two weeks of training.
Currently, we are in the midst of raising our support. We completed our cross-cultural training in Portland on July 4 - August 6, 2010. Once we are at 100% of our support and have the moving/set-up costs in place, we will move to Ireland, hopefully in June/July 2011. Once we arrive we will work with churches that are members of the Irish Baptist Association, focusing on the Killarney congregation. Evangelism and discipleship will be the main focus, but we are sure that music will be a big part of our ministry as well!
If you would like to hear more about our ministry, please contact us at mark.webb@crossworld.org and we will set up a time to meet with you. We love to share the vision God has given us. If you would like to explore the ministry opportunities of CrossWorld, their website is www.crossworld.org.
