European Missionary Profiles

Douglas Atherton was born in Liverpool, England, in 1964. He worked in the Civil Service before studying theology and history in Edinburgh, Birkenhead and Chester, going on to pastor churches in Heysham, Aberdare and Warrington. Doug has maintained links with OMS for more than 20 years, and he has served on the OMS UK Board since the mid 1990s. He is married to Debbie, and they have two adult daughters, Tina and Ruth.

As OMS UK executive director, Doug is part of the OMS UK office team based in Manchester, recruiting, training, sending and supporting people who are called by God to serve the mission fields of the world.

Gail grew up in the North East of England. She came to the Lord at age 13 at a youth camp. After completing her theological training at Northumbria Bible College she felt a call for missions. In 1990 she left for Costa Rica for language training and in 1991 to Bogota, Colombia.

Having been born in Colombia into a Christian family Daniel felt the call to serve the Lord since he was in his early teenage years. In 1987 he enrolled the Seminario Biblico de Colombia, a theological Seminary founded by OMS. In 1991 he finished his studies and went to work in the Christian Fellowship church in Bogota. There he met Gail and got married in 1993.

Daniel and Gail served in Colombia with OMS for 16 years in Church Planting, Bible Training, worship and Social Ministries. In 2007 they returned to the UK for home assignment and a period of further Theological training. After completing their studies they felt God directing them to work in Spain where OMS has been serving since 1972.

The Castros share a passion for presenting God’s message in challenging and relevant ways and a commitment to church development and the training of Christian leadership. These will be central to their ministerial involvement in Spain where they will serve in a local church in Madrid. They will also join a team doing evangelistic outreach in various towns north of Madrid.

Daniel and Gail have two daughters, Melissa and Ruth, both born in Colombia.

Bible verse:
For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness”, made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. (2Co 4.6, 7)

Steve, Helen and Nisha have just joined the OMS team in Mexico City, after a year of intense language training in Costa Rica. God started preparing them for this move to Mexico way back in 1998 when Helen first became involved in a project with street children there. After spending 15 months working with a Mexican missionary called Fidel Sanchez and with no international organisation to direct the work, she felt a burden from God to find the right organisation and link it up with Fidel and the fledgling project that he was running.

Helen is a registered general nurse, graduating from Edinburgh University in 1995. She returned to her work as a nurse in the UK in 1999, but in 2000 commenced a Dip HE in Applied Theology in order to prepare more adequately for her eventual return to Mexico. After her first trip Helen took several teams to Mexico where many others captured the vision including Steve who joined two of the teams and led subsequent teams as well. At Bible College Helen started making plans to return to Mexico long term, which is when she met OMS. At the time OMS were working with children in some of the poorer communities, however there was a desire on their part to go further and reach out to homeless children. Therefore the two separate visions came together, as the street children's project needed an organisation like OMS to provide accountability and structure to their work and to empower the national people. So, God brought Helen, the project and OMS together and now 6 years on the partnership continues to flourish and in fact the project is now an integral part of UNIFAM's outreach.

After a 9 month assignment with OMS in 2004 Helen came home to marry Steve who was just preparing to start a BA (Hons) in Applied Theology, after deciding to leave his job as a Police Officer in England. Steve and Helen actually started their relationship after Steve had been on one of the teams Helen was leading in 2003. Steve and Helen's relationship began and at the same time Steve felt a calling from God to serve in Mexico. In December 2005 they were married and spent the next 3 years living in Dorset, England where Steve completed his degree whilst serving as a student pastor in a local church. During this time their daughter Nisha was born (March 2008). After Steve's graduation in 2008 the family were accepted by OMS and they began fundraising to go back to Mexico. During this time Steve worked in the Chaplaincy department with the Royal Marines, and thankfully after a year God provided the funds they needed and they left for Costa Rica in the summer of 2009.

Nisha is now two and a half years old as the Cossletts reach the field and Steve and Helen are expecting another addition to the family in February 2011. During this next term the Cossletts will be working with the street children's project and team, planting churches in downtown Mexico City amongst the street people and some of the poorer communities in the city.

Tim was born in the Republic of Ireland, on a farm near the Cavan/Westmeath border. He was raised in the Catholic Church and was quite devout as a boy. As he grew older, though, he became disillusioned with religion and called himself an agnostic. After working in Dublin for several years, he emigrated to America at the age of 25. His plan was to get ahead financially. He found work in California, and for several years he lived there, living only for himself and his own desires. One night he watched Billy Graham on television and was confronted with the gospel of Jesus Christ. His first thought was, “I don’t like this man. He knows all about me!” but very soon after, God changed his heart and he embraced Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour.

In the following years Tim went to college and then to The Master’s Seminary, and met and married Barbara. God opened doors for Tim and Barbara to go and minister in England, where they lived for four years. They were then invited to come and live in Ireland and work with the Irish Baptist Church.

With their children, Tim and Barbara attend and serve at a church-plant in Roscommon Town. Tim is involved in various evangelism and church planting ministries.

We can testify to the Lord's patient leading as he prepared us for mission: he drew us together from different sides of the world to send us into the harvest field. Katuska is from Guayaquil in Ecuador; after Computer Engineering and Bible training, she travelled to Britain for further study in Theology, including cross-cultural work in the Middle East. All along, her goal was to prepare for mission. Steve is from England, studied at Oxford and worked as a teacher in Kent, Egypt and Southern Africa. It was there, working with missionaries from the USA, that he heard the same call to missions: so he returned to Britain to sign up for Bible College in Glasgow - where finally we met.

We first travelled together to Ecuador in 2001, to get married: then we put down roots in Scotland, where all three boys were born. Samuel is now 7, Benjamin 6 and Joseph 4. Most important in those years was the chance to serve in a wonderful church in the south of Glasgow. Meanwhile, the seeds of our future ministry had been sown, and began to grow: from first contacting OMS to finally travelling to the field took over two years and increasing faith, but at last in 2007 we packed up our home and came to Ecuador.

We live in the southern city of Cuenca, 2,500 metres up in the Andes; we've enjoyed getting to know the city, and the boys are quite well settled in school. Our principal ministry is in SEMBEC, the Bible Seminary of Cuenca, where we have taught a variety of classes over the last couple of years, such as Old and New Testament Introductions, Christian Education and a full course of Greek. We have a busy programme planned for the coming academic year, in which we are trying to establish a new one-year course with a strong practical focus to meet the needs of Cuenca’s churches.

Among the other opportunities for ministry are children's work, a women's bible study, prison visiting and simply encouraging hard-working pastors. However, in coming months we expect to focus more on evangelism and church planting, and at the same time we are always seeking to promote the Seminary and praying that the Lord will send us more students.

The one call to make disciples of all nations eventually brought Chris and Eddy to Spain, even though they belong to two different missions. Both originally come from Belgium but lived for over 15 years in London, partly to pursue theological and mission studies. They have a son called David, married to Holly.

Eddy is now a member of the teaching team of SEUT, one of the few Protestant Bible Colleges in Spain. The main goal of SEUT is to train the next generation of church leaders in the Spanish-speaking world, including Latin-America. Because the field is so wide, and also for practical reasons, the bulk of the teaching happens "by correspondence". Eddy's specific task lies in the area of Christian doctrine with a special interest in human nature, the Holy Spirit and ethics; however, his overall burden is to see Christians mature in discipleship. This is a much needed focus in theology as the tendency for many Bible Colleges is to become mainly academic.

Chris works with Healthcare Christian Fellowship (HCF), a mission which focuses on evangelizing healthcare professionals. She has been involved with HCF since 1984 when both Chris and Eddy worked at the European HQ of the mission in Holland. Now her task is more international and includes the setting up of a Masters course in Health and Healthcare, by correspondence, together with a Bible School in the UK. OMS and HCF have a partnership agreement worldwide which is being worked out in the lives and ministries of Eddy & Chris. As each human being is one person, "health" not only concerns the body, but affects mind and spirit as well. In this way, the two missions come together.

Melvin & Sharon Kelly from Northern Ireland are OMS missionaries to Mozambique.

Sharon, originally from Kilrea, Co. Londonderry grew up in a Christian home and committed her life to Christ at the age of six. Since she was a teenager, she has had an active involvement in outreach at home and short term mission overseas. She taught Geography at Ballymena Academy until she felt God's call to work for the Wash Basin, a Christian community centre in Ahoghill. She was involved in a variety of discipleship, pastoral and outreach ministries, which included leading a GAP year programme, an English ministry to ethnic minorities and woman’s evangelistic outreach. It was through the Wash Basin that Sharon first came into contact with OMS International. During her ministry there she organized and led four teams to Mexico City.

Melvin, from Aughnacloy, Co. Tyrone was also brought up in Christian home. At the age of eleven, he became a follower of Jesus. He matured in his walk with God and developed a passion for mission while at university, where he was actively involved in the Christian Union. After graduation, Melvin worked for the Belfast based company, Farrans Construction until God called him to use his construction training and experience to serve Him in Mozambique. He joined the Mozambique OMS team in April 2004, where he spent almost three years overseeing construction projects, including the Maputo Bible Seminary.

Since Melvin and Sharon got married in August 2007, they have been seeking God's will for the future. As a couple, they spent three and a half months in Mozambique from August to December 2008. Melvin & Sharon feel God leading them to return to train and empower the Mozambican Churches as they establish strategic sustainable ministries, reaching out into their communities with the transforming power of the Gospel. They also want to work closely with the Maputo Bible Seminary to facilitate ministry placements and bi-vocational training for the students. While in N Ireland over the last two years Melvin and Sharon have also helped set up Girassol, a charity shop in Antrim that supports the ministry out in Mozambique.

In December 2009 Melvin and Sharon were blessed by the arrival of twins Abigail and Joshua and the whole family plan to return to Mozambique in September 2010.

Mark, and his wife, Olivia, have served the Lord with OMS International since 1996. Mark, from Middlesbrough, England, first met Olivia, who originates from Namibia, in 1993 whilst she was touring the UK with a Gospel group from Namibia. Their first ministry assignment took them to the Andes region of Medellín, Colombia, to assist in sports evangelism and church discipleship ministries. 2001 transitioned them to the South African based Into Africa project, a church planting initiative which began amongst Francophone immigrants residing in the Gauteng region of South Africa.

Mark was also involved in the birthing of a sports outreach programme aimed at training township community leaders to disciple youth. Returning to the UK in 2005, Mark and Olivia focussed on training and preparing missionary candidates, facilitating interactive leadership workshops in Spain, and sharing the missionary challenge through music, message, and interactive workshops to churches across the UK. In 2008 the family moved to the world HQ of OMS in Greenwood, Indiana, where Mark continued serving as International Training Director for Every Community for Christ, the church planting ministry of OMS International. They have three boys – Jonathan, born in Colombia; Timothy, born in South Africa; and Benjamin, also born in South Africa. Mark is currently the Director of Training and Personal Development for OMS in the UK.