BCM International

By: Jeanette Windle with Arnold Maviya, BCM Zimbabwe Director Five years ago, Arnold and Paulin Maviya with their entire ministry team, a total of ten, were commissioned as BCM’s first missionaries in Zimbabwe, a nation of seventeen million in southern Africa. Their focus was children’s Bible clubs, reaching a total attendance of more than ten thousand a week in rural and remote areas where there were few or no churches (see Braving Lions, Hyenas, and NIV to Reach Zimbabwe’s Children, BCM World, 2014). But children grow up—and so do children’s ministries. “When you do good outreach programs for children, they […]

By: Gerlyn de Jesus BCM Philippines National Director Encounters are prevalent in the Philippines. These can be between our military and insurgents, men in uniforms with drug barons, or daily encounters with life’s difficult realities. But one testimony from a BCM church plant in General Santos City, the southernmost urban center of the Mindanao island group, gives witness to a very different and life-transforming encounter. Thirty-three-old Kenny Alain Bulawan was born into a very religious family in General Santos City, a city of a half-million located on Sarangani Bay, which opens into the Celebes Sea that divides the Philippine island […]

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: 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 […]