Office of Development

Abeneazer Urga

My home country of Ethiopia has more than 85 million people, including 24 million in 33 unreached people groups. There is a need for more workers to reach those people who have never heard the gospel even once.

In the past God allowed me to work among a least reached people group for a year while I was working with World Vision Ethiopia as a Sponsorship Facilitator. In this area God showed me the need for more workers to spread the gospel to the poor. At that time, I was involved in training, mobilizing and evangelizing with three small churches from various denominations. Then, having handed over the leadership of our evangelistic efforts, I joined the Evangelical Students’ and Graduates’ Union of Ethiopia (EvaSUE) which is part of the IFES (International Fellowship of Evangelical Students). There I served as a training secretary and then as a mission and communication secretary. God enabled me to train, mobilize and send hundreds of Ethiopian students on short-term missions to the least reached of our country. I was also able to lead various national and international short-term missions which helped me learn more and added invaluable experience to my ministry.

At CIU I am learning more about God and His heart for the lost world. My CIU education is shaping how I should approach missions, why missionary work is important, and that God’s primary goal for missions is to receive glory from the nations.

I hope that my experience, coupled with my education, will be used by God to reach the unreached in my country and beyond - for His glory.

Vivian Ochoa

God is calling me to serve in member care to cross-cultural workers. The Apostle Paul is a great example of someone who received care from believers who supported him, ministered to him and visited in him jail. Cross-cultural workers today also experience needs, trials, and challenges. Through pastoral counseling, spiritual formation, crisis care, training, and meeting practical needs, I hope to serve the whole person throughout the various stages of the career of the cross-cultural worker.

 After working as a telecommunications engineer for four and a half years, I moved into full-time cross-cultural work, taking a one-year program in Linguistics and Bible Translation. I have since lived cross-culturally in Papua New Guinea, Peru, India, Bangladesh, and Costa Rica for periods of two months to two years. As a Pastoral Counseling student I am currently doing my internship at a missions-minded church in Columbia and also work as an assistant to the director of the Pastoral Counseling program at CIU. These experiences help me understand the type of needs, trials, and challenges experienced by cross-cultural workers, their churches and their organizations.

My classes at CIU are equipping me with sound doctrine, cross-cultural preparedness, and the ability to serve cross-cultural workers with pre-field orientation, training, grief and loss, crisis, transition, re-entry and other life challenges. As I get closer to finishing my degree, I am integrating all the truths and tools needed to advance God’s mission in the world.