Global Outreach
Serving across the world
Our global partners are bringing hope to their neighbors by sharing God’s Word, providing clean water, caring for people living with HIV/AIDS, developing local church leadership, and much more.
Learn how you can join Jesus in transforming lives throughout the world.
North America
Alan Barr
Shoreline/Seattle
As a field staff member with Cru, Alan works closely with UPC’s International Ministries to win, build, and send international students and visiting scholars as ambassadors for Christ in their homelands. Cru Web page.
Global Friends, International Friendship House & Language Institute
Seattle
Global Friends, International Friendship House, and Language Institute are UPC ministries that take place locally but have a global impact. They form our local mission to reach current and future leaders around the world (current university students, research scholars, and professionals). Our international ministries focus primarily reaching the students and scholars at the UW and surrounding Seattle area. We aim to influence others for Christ through hospitality, friendship, English classes, activities, service, and opportunities for discipleship. Learn more here.
Anna Seeger
Seattle
After graduating from UW Bothell, God directed Anna’s path to cross with China Outreach Ministries. In the spring of 2020, she joined their mission of “Giving Christ to China’s Future Leaders” (current university students, research scholars, and professionals) at universities and research centers. Approximately 300,000 Chinese students and scholars are now on North American college and university campuses. Anna specifically works to make Christ known among the students and scholars in the Seattle area. She helps them grow in Christlikeness and equips them to influence others for Christ through leading English classes, Bible studies, and local trips. chinaoutreach.org
Kathy Giske
Turkey & Egypt
Kathy has been a missions partner with UPC since 2000. She mobilizes congregations to participate in building God’s kingdom among people groups that don’t yet have an indigenous church of their own. Her international focus is the Muslim world, with special emphasis on Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, and the immigrant Muslim community in the United States.
Caribbean
Bruce & Deb Robinson
Haiti
Bruce and Deb work in church development and encouragement helping planted churches reach critical mass. Activities include helping build church and school buildings and getting seminary trained leaders in churches that have never had a trained pastor. They also work in community development in church communities. This includes safe drinking water, sanitation, irrigation infrastructure, agriculture, dams, spring cappings, and whatever needs to be done. During summer vacation and holidays they help sponsor VBS and sports camps as an outreach to the children. Their ministry has two main emphases; helping Haitian believers and churches share the Gospel and disciple new believers, and helping the Haitian church help our poverty stricken brothers and sisters in Christ and their neighbors with basic human needs like water and food in the name of Jesus. Crossworld.org
Europe
Zefjan & Edita Nikolla
Albania
Zefjan is the pastor of Emmanuel Evangelical Church in Tirana and is ordained as a Presbyterian minister by the Santa Barbara Presbytery. He’s also the national director of BSKSH, which is the IFES student movement in Albania, and oversees staff, volunteers, and student leaders. Zefjan is involved in various national and international initiatives including the Albanian Leadership Forum and the European Leadership Forum
Bojan Ruvarac
Serbia
Bojan is the Director of Renewing Our Minds (ROM) in Fuzine, Croatia. The ROM project was born in Croatia in 1999, in the aftermath of the 90s post-Yugoslavian war that called for the education of young generations of leaders in the areas of peace building, reconciliation, and leadership development through service, modeled by the person of Jesus. ROM is a ministry of Forum for Leadership and Reconciliation. forumforleadership.org
Francis and Anne Omondi
Africa
Betsy & Eugene Meyer
South Africa
Betsy Meyer is the co-founder and Executive Director of Thembalethu Care Organization, a South African nonprofit organization caring and providing hope to a rural Zulu community hit hard by HIV/AIDS and poverty. Their programs focus on home-hospice care for the sick, assistance to orphaned and vulnerable children, and community mobilization. ourhope.org.za
Francis & Anne Omondi
Kenya
Francis and Anne live in their home country of Kenya where they have served as witness for Christ among the unreached peoples. They serve vulnerable communities affected by drought. They’re strategically placed both geographically and relationally to respond to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of the people around them, and they serve with community elders and NGOs to meet these needs. tsminternational.org
Gideon Ochieng
Kenya
A pastor, Gideon works to develop a community of grassroots leaders in the informal settlements around Nairobi and to empower youth through job placements and leadership training. ctmkenya.net
SCOPE Health
Ethiopia
SCOPE Health unites medical and faith communities to improve health for the most vulnerable people through innovative partnerships, leadership development, and measured impact. scopehealth.org
Asia
United Presbyterian Church of Vietnam
Vietnam
In the past several years, UPC’s mission partners in E. Asia and Thailand have completed their ministries and returned home. UPC’s Global Missions Department felt it imperative to keep our connection to Asia. In 2023, we established a new partnership with the United Presbyterian Church of Vietnam (UPCV) to benefit and enrich both ministries mutually. UPC is excited to join Jesus in his mission in Vietnam.
Meet Our Global Partners
Global Support Teams
Our lay-led support teams provide long-term support to strategic ministry partners sharing the hope of Christ through culture-specific ministry.
The Balkan Support Team’s purpose is to glorify God by responding to the expressed needs of the people of the former Yugoslavia whose lives were affected by war and ethnic strife. Since 1996, more than 12 mission teams and missionaries have been sent from UPC to the region.
The Support Team has funded partners in Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro, including churches, church planters, missionaries, and two organizations involved in reconciliation, leadership training, and evangelism: InterVarsity Serbia (EUS) for training interns and Renewing Our Minds (ROM), which sponsors conference gatherings in the region for young potential leaders.
The Holy Land Support Team exists to equip our congregation to help promote reconciliation, justice, and peace in the Holy Land. This happens through facilitating dual-narrative travel to the Holy Land in partnership with Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) and Mejdi Travel, prayerfully responding to the needs of Christians in and Palestine, providing opportunities to learn about the region’s history and current events.
Gather with others who are passionate about missions and committed to prayer and service to reach the nations for Christ.
Email Vivienne to learn more.
Gather with others who are passionate about missions and committed to prayer and service to reach the nations for Christ.
Email Vivienne to learn more.
Join a Global Partnership Support Team!
Help support God’s work around the world by joining a Missions Partner Support team. Teams can participate in one or more of the following:
- Prayer for our UPC partners
- Advocacy
- Financially supporting God’s work in other countries
Contact: Vivienne
