BCM International

By Shantal Artieda with Jeanette Windle From March 30th-April 7th, 2018, BCM International President Marty Windle and BCM Peru field director Jonatan Odicio joined BCM Guyana missionaries Ron Charles and Stanley Boodie for an Easter Christian workers conference in the town of Lethem near Guyana’s border with Brazil. Located between Surinam and Venezuela, Guyana was established as a British colony (formerly British Guiana). It remains part of the British Commonwealth and is the only country in South America with English as its official language. Its population of just over three-quarters of a million is predominantly East Indian, African, and indigenous […]

By: Marc Hoyle BCM volunteer Yvonne has been teaching Release Time Bible Clubs to second and third grade girls in Warren County, PA, for eighteen years. She admits to slowing down a bit now that she is 89 years old.  Every Tuesday and Thursday in two different locations, she arrives two hours early to set up her Bible Club room. The attendance chart is on a table with stars waiting to be affixed. Small prizes for verse recitations are unpacked. Large flags lean on their poles in the corner, ready for the pledges. Oversized blue and red plastic clips hold […]

By: Jeanette Windle with Freddy Chavez “I truly am a sinner and deserve this punishment,” confesses Prisoner M to BCM Bolivia missionary Freddy Chavez. “None of my family knows I am here in prison. I come from a place a day’s bus ride from here. I need someone to visit me because I am forgotten here. No one brings me supplies, and I have now been here five years without a trial or receiving a sentence.” Prisoner M is not unique in San Pablo Prison, one of several prisons in Bolivia’s highland city of Cochabamba. An estimated 70% of inmates […]

By: Lisa Biegert with Chuck and Cathy Powers Tucked away in the north of France is a small town known for its beautiful pottery and quintessentially French countryside. But beneath its picturesque exterior, Desvres hides a spiritual darkness. The area is steeped in alcoholism and has the highest suicide rate in all of France. Unemployment is high, occultism rampant, and any gospel witness almost non-existent. For thirty years, one Desvres resident prayed faithfully that God would send a pastor to start a church there. She was 82 years old when she saw her prayer answered with the arrival of BCM […]

By: Lisa Biegert with Sandy Barber “It’s amazing how fruitful our lives can be if we allow God to grow the fruit on other people’s trees!” exclaims BCM missionary Sandy Barber. Nearly twenty-five years ago, Bob and Sandy Barber were introduced to a Romanian ministry, New Hope. New Hope produces and distributes children’s material for churches across Romania. New Hope translated BCM’s Sunday School curriculum Footsteps of Faith into Romanian (see BCM World, June 2014). But their ultimate goal was to see the Romanian people empowered to multiply their own ministry to children. So when the Barbers introduced BCM’s children’s […]

By: Elizabeth Byler New USA Ministries director Marc Hoyle was born into a missionary family in France, instilling in him a heart for missions and the French people. But by age seventeen, he wanted to be an architect more than a missionary. Meeting a missionary who also worked bi-vocationally as an architect changed his perspective on how his passion for architecture could also be used in missions. Marc earned a degree in architecture from Temple University, then worked as coordinator of the Planning & Design Ministry with Helps International Ministries, specialized in helping mission agencies and ministries around the world […]

SNOW BOWL COMES TO MANDAVILLE Winter programming for BCM’s Mandaville Camp & Retreat Center in upstate New York near the Canadian border wrapped up with a free family snow day Saturday, January 13th, and three separate overnight Snow Bowls, each welcoming a different age group. For younger ages, these events last twenty-four hours from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon. A teen Snow Bowl over school break lasts three days. The Snow Bowls are designed to reconnect with summer campers as well as to welcome new arrivals. Along with Bible lessons, worship, small group discussion, great food, and virtually NO sleep, […]

By: Jeanette Windle with Imro and Linda Smit “So many big, important things—in fact, most of them—start very small,” expresses BCM missionary Linda Smit. “We’ve seen this over the years on the BCM Suriname field and are seeing it once again.” Unique in South America, Suriname is a Dutch-speaking country, its population of just over a half million an eclectic mix of East Indian, African, Creole, Amerindian, Chinese, Indonesian, Caucasian, and other ethnicities. Almost half of Suriname’s population (241,000) live in its capital city, Paramaribo. This is also where BCM Suriname has its ministry headquarters as well as their central […]

By: Paul Padmaker, Executive Director BCM India “I had been praying for a bicycle for two years.” A BCM church-planter, Kendrek Tue pastors a church in Amda, a village in the northern India state of Jharkhand. But he also oversees church plants in six neighboring villages within a total radius of 11 kilometers that have no pastors or organized churches of their own. Tue explains further, “Over a period of time, I saved up some money to buy a bicycle. But then I faced a financial crisis at home, and I had to use that money for something else. I […]

By: Sandy Barber, Marion Odicio, Pat Govender, Luba Valkov, and other ISMT contributors BCM’s teacher training curriculum In Step with the Master Teacher (ISMT) is designed not just to equip children’s ministry leaders, but to multiply quality teachers around the world who in turn can train leadership in their own nations and regions. Since ISMT’s inception in 2004, God has used this curriculum to impact children’s ministry even in countries and regions far beyond where BCM has missionaries or resident trainers. Just how does that happen? The following four recent stories gives an answer. SOPHIA, BULGARIA Emanuil and Luba Valkov […]

By: Lisa Biegert Adults might expect a conversation with a five-year-old to be funny and even silly. You don’t anticipate an emotionless small boy to state nonchalantly, “The police killed my brother for trying to steal from people on the bus.” But such a conversation is sadly normal for BCM Brazil missionaries. If the frequency of such events would make any adult shudder, slum children growing up in such violence are routinely witnesses to murder on their own streets. BCM Brazil (known locally as Ministerio Centralizado Na Biblia, or MCB) works primarily in Recife, a city of over three million […]

By: Shekinah Danielle R. Dimanlig BCM Philippines ISMT Trainer “In Step with the Master Teacher is boring!” That was my first impression of ISMT. I was fifteen years old when I was invited to attend only because my mom was one of the trainers. I went because I had to, but it wasn’t something I appreciated. I couldn’t have known that five years later I would have another encounter with ISMT that would change my life forever. Quick background: I am currently a senior at Philippine Normal University with a major in Early Childhood Education. I’d never actually wanted to […]

By: Lisa Biegert On July 22, 2017, BCM’s Big Sky Bible Camp in Big Fork, Montana, celebrated its seventieth anniversary. The celebration included an Open House with two-hundred-fifty attendees from as far away as California and Arizona. To showcase popular camp features, BSBC opened up its waterfront, ropes course, espresso machine, and camp store. Attendees were able to enjoy inflatable games and tour the camp’s grounds. In true Big Sky camp style, the day ended with a hot dog roast. To honor Big Sky’s seventy years of history, pictures chronicling the camp over the decades were enlarged and displayed. BCM […]

By: Shantal Artieda It´s been four months since the flooding of BCM Peru’s main campus (see El Niño Devastates BCM Peru, BCM World, Spring 2017) near the capital city of Lima. Since then BCM Peru missionary families have worked diligently to restore the property, rebuilding water-damaged missionary housing and even improving the camp facility for future ministry opportunities. The help of God´s people, locally and internationally, has been a great encouragement for the BCM Peru family, not just with provisions and financial aid, but cleaning and reconstruction of the camp grounds. This has included a number of volunteer teams who […]