Mobilizers matter
April and her team in Japan
My name is April McKee. I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma and came to Christ at a very young age. I was first introduced to global missions by my soon-to-be husband at Missouri State University. After we got married, we joined a church plant in a high-needs area in Nebraska. There were lots of refugees living next door so we did a lot of fun outreach events. For the first time, I saw the gospel spread not from a pulpit, but just by loving your neighbors well. It was beautiful.
A few years later we moved to Saint Charles, MO to live near family when God gave us an opportunity to go to Nagano, Japan for three months to serve at an outdoor adventure lodge called Northstar. We love to rock climb, and mountain bike. We were able to work with some Encompass World Partners missionaries and we joined the organization with the plan of going back to Japan long term.
It took us several years to raise the support, and we ended up signing a two year contract to return Nagano, Japan to do ministry there. While in Japan, learning Japanese and investing in the local people, we welcomed our second son, Graham. Due to the pandemic, my husband was not allowed to be with me during my standard five-day hospitalization. I began to have severe complications. I ended up being in heart failure, and my liver, and kidneys were affected. The Japanese doctors didn’t know what was causing my issues, but I had a severe undiagnosed case of pre-eclampsia.
God was so gracious to me. But due to the undiagnosed health issues, I began having panic attacks multiple times a day. Having a toddler and a new born baby while trying to move our family internationally was also challenging. We moved back to the states and God is the only way we made it through. We needed time to heal and I was blessed to take a new role with Encompass as a Church Planting Network Administrator.
I work directly with Encompass’s Church Planting Network Director, Ted Offutt. I am in charge of his schedule and travel and get to serve and work with all of the missionaries in our network. We have teams in Japan, Western Asia, Poland, Africa, and the US. I also help plan key gatherings for our staff. I was able to plan and attend events in Western Asia and Japan. In Japan, I also provided childcare so that the parents could spend meaningful time with other Encompass Staff.
Currently, I am working to coordinate our Encompass Global Staff Conference which will be in Portugal in January of 2025. This will be a wonderful time that ALL of our Global staff will get to be together.
Please pray as I am working very hard to build my financial support team. I still need 40% of my monthly goal to be fully supported. This is challenging in this season to do on top of my normal job, being a wife, and a mom of two very energetic little boys (Lincoln & Graham).
If I am unable to reach my goals, I may not be able to attend the Global Staff Conference in January.
My eldest son, Lincoln has had strep several times since last December. I think it is time to take him to an ENT to make for sure that nothing else is contributing to this.
Pray for more global workers who are simply willing to go and for new missionaries to join our team.
Lastly, pray for Japan. It is very special to me. They are the 2nd largest unreached people group in the world. They are very kind people, but soil there is very hard. They are very spiritually open, but also their identity is very tied to being Eastern or Japanese. For example, they can’t be a Christian because that is for Westerners. Religion there is about a mile wide but only an inch deep. Each building built in Japan is dedicated to a Shinto god, so they invite a lot of spirits into their lives thinking that it will bring them good luck and fortune. We must intercede for them!
I’d love to connect with you further. For questions or to give support directly, contact my email: amckee@encompassworld.org