Mixing It Up
4/18/2012 in Category From Our Missionaries
Jason and Emily Atkins have been serving in Guinea-Bissau with Youth for Christ since August 2006.
Working in a third world country gives missionaries a chance to do a little of everything and they have done exactly that at the YFC Youth Center where they live and work. They started out developing curriculum, teaching classes, and training national teachers for the YFC computer and English schools that now bring over 800 students to the Youth Center each day.
They still work with teacher training and curriculum development and Jason manages an agricultural machine production / construction ministry, for which they built a shop at the Youth Center.
They write:
We had two purposes in mind when we built the shop here at the Youth Center – to build and maintain things for YFC and to support the local church.
With the construction in Mansoa and the installation of the solar power system here in Bissau, we’ve had many opportunities to be involved in YFC’s work in Guinea-Bissau. This past month we had a cool opportunity to help missionary friends of ours who are building a church. Their brand new cement mixer broke and they needed it fixed right away.
They were able to bring it to the shop and Jason spent the day straightening it back out, reinforcing it with heavier steel plate, and sent it back out stronger than it was when they bought it. We hope that the shop will have tons of other opportunities just like that one to be a blessing to God’s work here in Guinea-Bissau!
Are you good at working with your hands? Youth for Christ has numerous mission opportunities available, whatever your skills. Go to our mission opportunities page and check the boxes that correspond to your skills in the search form to see where you might be able to serve.