MBC’s support for the BMS World Mission goes back more than seven decades. And that support hasn’t just been monetary. No, as far back as 1960 MBC members Dr Michael Flowers and his wife June were accepted for service in East Pakistan and since then this church has supplied an almost uninterrupted stream of men and women who following their call have served far and wide.
Like Michael, our current Mission Partners are also in the medical profession. They are husband and wife Mark and Andrea Hotchkin; Mark is a specialists in emergency medicine, Andrea in obstetrics and gynaecology. Normally their workplace is a hospital in Bardai, Chad, a small town on the very edge of the Sahara Desert.
Back in the UK until next February, the couple are planning to spend time with family and friends ahead of Mark undergoing ongoing tests to confirm his heart is still behaving exactly as it should.
The illustrated talk they gave today at MBC was as heartening as it was alarming. With regular stabbings and shootings keeping Mark busy, and with Andrea’s work being thwarted by either the cost or the lack of specific medicines it seems to the outsider that there must surely be an easier way of earning a living. But that’s the point. To Mark and Andrea where they are, the fact they live in a mud and breezeblock home and what they are doing isn’t their choice, no, it’s an answer to a call, a call from God.
Although I’ve just told you that Mark and Andrea are based in Bardai, concern about Mark’s heart has forced the couple to move some 650 miles south to work, learn and teach in the country’s capital N’Djamena.
That after all this time MBC continues to support BMS World Mission is not only something to be proud of, it is following Mark and Andrea’s visit a very tangible reminder that every prayer we pray and every penny we donate really, really counts.