What do you do at SIM UK?
I am Lead Mobiliser and Safeguarding Lead, and I’ve been with the Mobilisation team for about five 1/2 years.
What does your job look like day-to-day?
I line-manage two of the mobilisers, which involves overseeing their workload, supporting them, and answering any questions they have. I also support Hannah Boxall however she needs.
As a Mobiliser, I’ll answer enquiries from anyone interested in serving with SIM UK, meet with them and invite them to apply if we want to go ahead. Then, I’ll research placements, help the applicants through the process and keep in touch with them once they’re sent out.
When the mission workers come back, we’ll debrief together, making sure everything went well. I’ll attend to any issues, such as sending them for health checks in case they picked anything up. If it’s been a stressful time, I’ll help them process that.
As Safeguarding Lead, if any safeguarding issues come up, I’m the first port of call and I’ll look into the situation.
There’s no normal day!
What makes you passionate about your role?
I love mission. I want to see people come to know the Lord, people to go deeper with the Lord and for them to experience the Lord in new ways. I used to be a mission worker – I spent five years in Spain doing evangelism and church planting, and then 12 ½ years in Costa Rica doing biblical counselling – so helping people and getting to still be part of that is what motivates me.
How have you seen God working through your job?
When I first started with SIM, and I joined a meeting with a couple, who’d come back from Liberia. The husband was a dentist, and he said to me: ‘How many dentists are in Liberia?‘
Liberia has a population of five million, and there were five or six dentists, so you can imagine the patients’ problems he’d dealt with: not the extractions or fillings, but serious health issues like tumours, because they hadn’t had regular check-ups to catch problems early.
You couldn’t even train to be a dentist in Liberia, they didn’t have anything. But in the past couple of years, the couple received funding that enabled them to establish a dental school, with a course that’s recognised by a university in the UK. Having people able to train to be dentists there is making a huge difference in Liberia.
Another story where I’ve seen God at work is about a young lady who went to Ghana to live in a place where many people can’t read or write. So, she brought the gospel to them in a new way.
Through her love for art, this gifted mission worker depicted the story of grief in the Bible and displayed the pictures around her house. She then invited people to come to her house and explained what emotions were represented in each picture and inviting them to come to God with these emotions. It was incredible how she took this idea and thought, ‘How do I help these people?’
She brought the gospel to people – not in a traditional way like a sit-down Bible study – but by explaining about how Jesus is the one who can heal this sorrow, grief, sadness and anger in their hearts.
How can we pray for you?
- For more people in Scotland to respond to the Lord’s call – I would love to see more people come through longer term.
- That I continue to serve the people I look after well and equip them well so they are able to see others come to know the Lord.