INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS
Rowandale Baptist Church has a long history of supporting mission work in various parts of the world. The following information and links will provide an insight into our past and current involvement and support. Rowandale has an active Missions Committee that oversees our involvement in and support for specific projects and encourages our people to get personally engaged in missions.
CURRENT MISSIONARIES
These are the missionaries that Rowandale is currently supporting, and the organization that they are serving with:
Lyndell Campbell (and Paulo Réquia) – NAB Missions
Lyndell serves as a seminary professor at a Baptist seminary in Southern Brazil. Her husband Paulo pastors a Portuguese language church.
Paul & Tanya Gericke – NAB Missions
Paul and Tanya Gericke have been overseeing the development of Camp Falcon Rock in Western Romania for the past 10 years. Under their leadership, an abandoned farm was transformed into a beautiful camp facility, and has become a year-round ministry and discipleship center for the region.
Jeff & Sonya Kilmartin – NAB Missions
Jeff and Sonya serve in Cameroon and Nigeria, where they teach, work with practical projects like water projects and starting a rural medical clinic, and they provide leadership and coaching of the local believers.
Christoph & Andrea Koebel– OM (Operational Mobilization)
Christoph and Andrea are members and attend Rowandale Baptist Church, while serving as representatives and administrators for OM in this part of Canada. Christoph travels a lot, visiting Bible schools and churches in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, presenting opportunities to serve the Lord with OM. Andrea works at home, mostly, processing applications of interested parties, and taking care of other administrative tasks of the Mission.
Randy & Sandra Huebert– CTEN (Commission to Every Nation)
About 15 years ago, God placed a burden on Randy and Sandra’s hearts to begin a safe home (“El Refugio” – The Refuge) in Ensenada, Mexico for at risk girls that have been rescued from situations of neglect, abuse, trafficking, and/or drug abuse. The girls are shown God’s love not only through the provision of their physical needs, but also through the examples of their spiritual family in the home and at church.
MISSIONS PROJECTS
In addition to supporting individual missionaries, Rowandale also supports projects or ministries in a number of places:
Camp Falcon Rock (in Romania) – NAB Missions
Camp Falcon Rock is a ministry center owned and operated by the Hungarian Baptist Convention of Romania (HBC) in partnership with NAB missions in Romania. A 60-acre property has been under development for about 10 years and has become an active ministry center for the region. It is being used to run camp programs for children and youth, as a conference centre and as a base from which to evangelize, disciple and raise up the next generation of Jesus followers in Romania.
Chain of Love Homes (in Brazil) – NAB Missions
Chain of Love operates a system of foster homes in Southern Brazeil with house parents/caregivers who are committed to the integral care of the children and adolescents, providing them with healthy development and a good quality of life in a Christian context.
White Cross Medical Support (for Cameroon) – NAB Missions
White Cross provides medical supplies and relief goods to hospitals, health centers, and guest/rest houses in West Africa, with a primary focus on Cameroon and Nigeria. Volunteers at Rowandale collect supplies and prepare items like bandages, baby blankets, and surgical wrappers; these are sent off to Edmonton several times each year and then shipped to Cameroon by container.
ShareWord Global– formerly “Gideons International”
After distributing millions of Bibles and New Testaments over the past 100+ years, the Gideons have rebranded their ministry as ShareWorld Global. They have a new vision to partner with believers in dozens of countries around the world (in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and South America), training and equipping them to share the gospel through intentional evangelism.
Bible Correspondence Course (in Turkey) – OM (Operational Mobilization)
The Turkish Bible Correspondence Course, established in 1962, continues to be an extremely relevant ministry. It has a very far reaching literature mailing outreach, website, social media pages, outreach teams and wide network of churches focused on follow up and discipleship.
Ndola Outreach (in Nigeria) – a past project (1999-2018)
Rowandale Baptist Church was connected with a tribe of people in southern Nigeria (the Ndola people) in 1999 where there were just a few Christians. We were able to help a few young men get a theological education and they became leaders in their communities. As they shared their faith and taught their people other life skills, many of them also became followers of Jesus. Rowandale supported the ongoing work of evangelism and community development for 19 years, financially, and also with several teams going there to minister in person. By 2018, things had progressed to such a point that the Ndola were able to self-sufficiently continue on in their journey without foreign support.
Kosovo Outreach (in the Balkan Region) – since 2019
As the Missions Committee prayed in 2018 about where else in the world we could have an effective outreach to a little-reached or unreached people group, our thoughts were directed to the Balkan region of Europe. Pastor Jonathan and Frank Ulrich, Chairman of the Missions Committee, made an exploratory trip to Kosovo and Montenegro in the Spring of 2019 to get a better sense of what ministry opportunities might be there. Kosovo was originally Christianized in the early centuries AD, but during the many years of occupation by the Ottoman Empire, it had become predominantly Muslim. There are not many evangelical Christians in Kosovo now, and there are several least-reached people groups. We have made good contacts with some Christians on the ground in Kosovo who are actively sharing their faith and the gospel message. In the fall of 2024, a group from Rowandale went out on a missions trip to Kosovo to encourage and support the outreach and ministry of the local believers there. We have been praying for the Lord to bring people to faith in some of the unreached communities and are seeing God work in amazing ways.
