Manila, Philippines: Meet World Mission Communications Asia-Pacific’s (WMC-AP) newest team members- Ingrid Kiper and Mireu Kim!
Ingrid first joined WMC-AP during the second half of 2016. Prior to her assignment, she worked with the team in the Philippines for a month in 2015. Ingrid comes from the US, with American- Guatemalan heritage. She graduated in 2014 from Trevecca Nazarene University, where she majored in BA in Intercultural Studies (with English as a Second Language as her minor course). While in college she served as an intern missionary in a Creative Access Area for three months and after her tertiary studies spent a year in Northern Thailand as a Volunteer with MissionCorps.
Mireu, on the other hand, was welcomed by the WMC-AP team just last week! He is from South Korea and in 2014 finished a Bachelor of Theology in Christian Education with a double major in Broadcasting and Digital Media at Korea Nazarene University (KNU). He worked with Open Hands, an NGO providing water purifiers and other school supplies to children in the Philippines.
Ingrid’s and Mireu’s stories of their call to missions are very interesting and compelling. Mireu was studying at KNU when God began to call him during a visit to India with a group of friends from a Nazarene Church in Korea. He felt an interest to know what missions was all about and how it could help him see the world. He asked God and felt Him saying, “Come, I will be with you.” He thought he was being called to go, but didn’t respond at the moment. It was while on a short-term mission trip to Thailand that he finally accepted that God was calling him to go. Keeping in mind Philippians 3:14, Mireu took the plunge.
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Ingrid, on the other hand, was heartbroken when she felt that God was calling her into full-time ministry! She didn’t want to go. She thought being a missionary meant to be a preacher overseas, and speaking in front of crowds wasn’t exactly her cup of tea.
“I had a Moses-like experience where it was painfully obvious that God was calling me into full-time ministry. I had my whole life planned at age 8. My passion was for visual narratives like animation and graphic novels. God was wanting me out of the drawing board and into the jungle, and it terrified me.”
Ingrid ran away from God’s call for years and it wasn’t until she went to school at Trevecca, that she learned that ministry didn’t just have to be on the stage; she could still serve while working behind the scenes! Her bicultural heritage, gift for learning languages, and overall love for learning naturally brought her to overseas ministry.
Ingrid hopes that her first passion of visual narratives and art will create effective ministry during her stay. Meanwhile, Mireu aspires to learn effective communication techniques with people from different cultures, incorporating his knowledge in Broadcasting and Digital Media.
WMC-AP is very delighted to welcome Ingrid and Mireu to their growing family! Their amazing talents and passion to serve are wonderful additions to the pool of expertise that exists in the office.
Please pray for Ingrid and Mireu as they follow God’s call to missions. We admire them for taking that leap of faith, despite challenges of being away from home, apart from their family and friends and out of their comfort zones.
Ingrid and Mireu have simple yet meaningful words of encouragement to those who feel God’s call to missions: “Go! Trust him and He will make a new way.”
“Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.”
– Isaiah 43:19 (KJV)
