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Meet our missionaries
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Jim & Lois Stauffer
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Just after their wedding,
without a job Jim thought he had, the Stauffers volunteered two weeks at
Key-Way-Tin Bible Institute. Those two weeks turned into two years on KBI
staff, and a growing desire to serve as career missionaries. Several
experiences and choices had brought them to that point.
Jim was born into a
Pennsylvania Dutch family. As a teen he'd understood salvation, but
delayed surrendering his life. "I almost waited too long," he
says. At age 16 he fell 20 feet through a roof at work. He thought he was
going to die, but he still put off giving his life to Christ.
Shortly after his recovery
Jim's
dad took him to northern Ontario to help a missionary with construction.
Later their family decided to move there to join the work, and God used
the missionaries there to get a hold of Jim. He finally surrendered, and
felt a peace he'd never known.
Jim attended Prairie Bible
Institute in the early 70s. With its strong missionary emphasis, it was
there he learned of several missions, including NCEM. And there one day he
found himself seated next to a graduating student who told him of her
plans for NMTC (NCEM's summer program). The student was Lois, daughter of
rural Albertan missionaries who had joined Prairie staff.
Lois accepted Christ as a
child, and shared in her parents' life of ministry. She doesn't remember
ever not knowing about NCEM. Several missionaries were like extended
family, she says. (For awhile her family rented on the property near Lac
La Biche that was later donated to NCEM.)
Lois's parents regularly had
students into their home. One of them was Jim, who admits to borrowing a
book from her dad ... so he'd have a good excuse to come back! As Jim and
Lois got to know each other, and as Jim prayed and considered God's will
for his life, he also went on NMTC (the year after Lois), and they were
married in 1975.
While volunteering at KBI, the
Stauffers formally applied to NCEM for village work. Like other missionary
candidates, a big test was raising their financial support.
"I came from a Mennonite
culture that drew back suspiciously from Christian organizations that
'begged'
for money," says Jim. "However, even in finances we've found
God's grace abundant and His provision sufficient."
Hobbema (AB) was their first assignment,
followed by Lac La Martre (Wha Ti), NWT. "We've learned that God
has His own ways of working through different people," say the
Stauffers. "We've had to learn to compare ourselves less with others
and be more concerned with fulfilling God's will for us in the place He
put us."
Click here to meet more of our
missionaries
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