Welcome to World Harvest Mission

Well, we got the word back yesterday and you're now "looking" at World Harvest Mission's newest missionaries!  We feel fully evaluated (having written an extensive application, taken psych testing/profiling, and sitting through both group evaluations and personal interviews) and are glad that WHM has agreed to take us on for this wild ride of McCropders to Burundi.

Thought you might enjoy hearing a little bit about our new family...I don't think we ever blogged about choosing an agency, which might be of interest to some.  World Harvest first came to our attention several years ago.  Our missions pastor, Bob Lynn, used to sit on the Board, and one of our other mentors, Steve Telian, had connections as well.  When the guys went to Brackenhurst (a continuing medical education conference held in Kenya every 2 yrs for missionaries) in 2010, they met up with a few WHM missionaries but quickly dismissed WHM as a potential agency because at that time WHM was only working medically at a small clinic in rural Uganda, not really the place for us.

Fast forward 18 months.  We felt that Burundi was where God was calling us next, but basically no one was working there in terms of agencies.  We approached a few and none were interested in opening new fields for medical missions.  So we returned to World Harvest.  They were not only interested, but excited about the possibilities, and officially accepted Burundi as a new field last March.

So, who is World Harvest?  They were started out of New Life Presbyterian Church (founded by Jack Miller) just over 25 years ago, and now have over 150 missionaries working mainly in Europe and East Africa.  Overall, it's a pretty small non-denominational mission and has a wonderful family feel to it.  The McLaughlins and Alyssa were able to attend the East Africa field retreat last August in Mombasa, Kenya, and we were impressed by the quality of people in the mission--real people, admitting their faults, holding to grace, loving God.  The mission of WHM is this: Laying down our lives to proclaim the Kingdom of Jesus Christ through preaching, healing, and equipping. It might not seem all that unique to some of you, but for us, it captures exactly what we want to do and we are excited to be a part of it.

World Harvest does have a history of sending groups such as ours onto the missions field.  They primarily do church planting and discipling, whereas our focus will be more medical training (and discipling as well).  There are still many details and logistics to work out, so please pray for WHM and for us as we grow together.  But for now, let us say that we are excited at this next step God has brought us along, we are blessed to be a part of this new community, and we look forward to many years to come.