This week Harry and Annie Bergshoeff will leave their home in Mississauga, Ontario and head to the country of Kenya. For four months, the couple will serve as International Relief Mangers (IRM) for CRWRC, now known as World Renew. While they are not new to World Renew’s ministry, this will be their first experience serving as IRMs.
“We are both recently retired and in good health—and we feel that we still have a lot to give,” says Annie, who spent many years as a nurse. “It’s God’s timing. And we’re eager to get going.”
This week Harry and Annie Bergshoeff will leave their home in Mississauga, Ontario and head to the country of Kenya. For four months, the couple will serve as International Relief Mangers (IRM) for CRWRC, now known as World Renew. While they are not new to World Renew’s ministry, this will be their first experience serving as IRMs.
“We are both recently retired and in good health—and we feel that we still have a lot to give,” says Annie, who spent many years as a nurse. “It’s God’s timing. And we’re eager to get going.”
“We’ve been incredibly blessed as a couple,” says Annie. “Now we’re going to a place where we have to rely on other people and on God in a new way.”
Both Harry and Annie have had some experience volunteering before, and traveling—especially Harry, who traveled often during his long career in telecommunications. The couple is grateful, however, for this opportunity to serve together—especially on trip of this length, which takes them away from friends and family.
“We have always had a passion for World Renew and its work,” shares Harry. “We had been waiting for the right opportunity, and this is a good fit for us—we can work together and support each other.”
The Bergshoeffs will be overseeing a “Food-for-Work” food distribution project for 7,400 households in south east Kenya.
Food-for-Work activities provide food to able-bodied participants in exchange for work on community projects such as water pan rehabilitation or construction of land terraces to reduce erosion. By the end of the project it is expected that successful short-rains will help alleviate the food shortages and accompanying high food prices and will stabilize food insecurity in the country.
This particular project will run on a monthly basis for the next six months—and new IRMS will start in mid-January, when the Bergshoeff’s placement ends.
While Harry and Annie are both looking forward to using their skills and abilities to assist the Kenyan people, they have no doubt they will also have much to learn from members of the community.
“We very much see this as an exchange,” says Harry.” We are going there with skills we can share but looking forward to learning from the local people as well.”
The couple is also certain that God will use this experience serving overseas to deeper their faith and trust in Him.
“We’ve been incredibly blessed as a couple,” says Annie. “Now we’re going to a place where we have to rely on other people and on God in a new way.”
Harry echoes this readiness to be challenged and changed by God while reach out to those in need in Kenya.
“In our home context, when we have so much, we don’t always have enough dependence on God,” he says. “We think that our time in Kenya will stretch us in ways that we’ve never been stretched before. And we look forward to that.”
Please keep the Bergshoeffs in your prayers as they help renew hope, rebuild lives, and reach out in love to God’s children in Kenya.
Click here to find out more about World Renew’s work in Kenya. For information on World Renew's East Africa Drought Response, click here.
For more information about World Renew’s International Relief Manager program or to attend one of three IRM workshops taking place in three Michigan cities in April, contact Bernice Oostdyk at 1-800-730-3490.