International Missions

See what short term mission our Presbytery of the Alleghenies is involved in, and how you can be a part.

After serving with Campus Crusade for Christ in Japan, the Burrows family came back to the U. S. to work with CCC’s FamilyLife division. They currently live in Little Rock, AR, home of FamilyLife Ministries. The Presbyterian Church of Portersville has a long time friendship with the Burrows, since Judy worked with CCC at SRU and attended this church during Vern Holstad’s ministry.

Our Roots – Providing the Blueprints for Marriage
The roots of FamilyLife go back as far as 1951, with the beginning of Campus Crusade for Christ. Its founders, Bill and Vonette Bright, had a great desire to help fulfill Christ’s Great Commission — taking the gospel to every nation. Starting on one college campus with one couple, Campus Crusade has grown into a multifaceted ministry with tens of thousands of full-time and associate staff serving in more than 150 countries.

In 1976, Campus Crusade began Family Ministry to provide pre-marriage seminars for its staff members. Following our success in meeting the needs of pre-marrieds, married staff couples began asking for encouragement through marriage seminars. Community leaders and pastors soon found out about the seminars and said they were exactly what couples needed — the blueprints on how to build strong homes. Family Ministry, now called FamilyLife, opened the FamilyLife Marriage Conference to the public in 1978.

This year more than 100 FamilyLife Marriage Conferences will be held in almost every major city in America. These weekend conferences will offer hope to tens of thousands of marriages.

www.familylife.com

The Gideons International is the result of a meeting between two men who wished to band commercial travelers together for evangelism. What began in 1908 as an Association of Christian businessmen placing Bibles in hotel rooms has evolved into an expanding mission to provide Scriptures to all people in nearly every facet of life. Today, we have taken more than 2 billion Scriptures in more than 95 languages to 200 countries, territories, and possessions across the globe.

For more information visit the Gideons International website.

Barry was raised in a Christian family who attended an independent Baptist church. At an early age he remembers accepting the Lord after the children’s service. Suzzanne was not raised in a Christian family but thanks God for how He came to her family through a childhood friend and some of Barry’s family members. They both met at 11 years of age and began writing letters to each other from that first meeting and thus a romance began.

After completing high school and two years of college for Barry, they got married in 1983. They then obeyed God’s call to pursue full time ministry, getting ministry training at Moody Bible Institute. They began to become involved in the ministry of Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL International. In September of 1994 they went to serve Wycliffe in the city of Nairobi.
After adopting Kaitlyn and Molly in Butler the Nichols now live at Wycliffe’s JAARS Center in North Carolina.
The History of Wycliffe Bible Translators
Wycliffe was founded in 1942 by William Cameron Townsend. A missionary to the Cakchiquel Indians of Guatemala, Townsend had caught the vision for translation when a Cakchiquel man challenged him: “If your God is so great, why doesn’t He speak in my language?”

Townsend resolved that everyone should be able to read God’s Word in their own language. Borrowing the name of the Reformation hero, John Wycliffe, Townsend founded “Camp Wycliffe” in 1934 as a linguistics training school. By 1942, “Camp Wycliffe” had grown into two sister organizations, Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Today, the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Wycliffe Bible Translators work together to translate Scripture, train field personnel in linguistics and promote interest in translation.
Wycliffe Bible Translators

www.wycliffe.org