On a sunny afternoon in September, SIM USA mission workers Steve and Mary visited the SIM UK Cambridge office and encouraged the staff team with some stories of how they’ve seen God change lives during 33 years of overseas mission work.
Steve and Mary Hawthorne worked in Bolivia South America among the Quechua people. Steve is a Family Medicine doctor and worked in a rural government hospital and in an urban Christian clinic. Mary used her background in education to train Sunday School teachers in that rural district, and to start an English school in the city.
Steve and Mary spent many years in Potosí, a mining city…
Something about the mines in
and also in the same local church where we met Esther, the dentist, there was a woman who came every Sunday with all of her children but never her husband. She became a particular friend of my wife, Mary. And her husband wasn’t antagonistic to their going to church but would never accompany them. He had been a miner since his teenage years and was now in his 50s.
But would never go with them for some of these reasons, that miners felt that if anybody wasn’t participating in these offerings to the devil, that they could bring bad luck on the whole crew. But one day, he went into the tunnels which are quite far underground, and unbeknownst to him, in the time between the day before and this day, this gas – NOX they call it – this colourless, odourless gas which forms after the explosion of nitrate, had collected. And he just walked up a little bit on this tunnel and was overcome and fell backwards, and broke his neck.
He was taken out by his friends on a stretcher and spent two months in the hospital just on his back in a collar. His vertebrae had broken but hadn’t severed his spinal cord. While it healed, he couldn’t move. That gave him time to think about things and one afternoon, a woman from another local church who had a ministry visiting local patients in the hospital came by. He still remembers seeing her enter his ward sort of silhouetted – there was a window with the sun setting behind her, lighting her up where her profile was dark but there was this glow around her. And that kind of gave him a sense of anticipation, and she came over and shared the gospel with him. That’s how he became a Christian.
Ever since then, he came to church and I got to meet him, and he became the link for me to get invitations inside the mines, to become an occupational health and safety worker for that mining company. And then he invited Mary and myself to come to their house for a Bible study, with other miners who were sort of submarine Christians – kind of under the radar. But helping them to feel more comfortable in understanding the scriptures and the message of the gospel to be able to share it more that way. And so Lorenso and Hulia they’re the ones that are featured in that little video if you want to include that link and hear their story in their own words. He’s become quite an effective witness for the Lord among the miners there.
Vimeo video
In 2022, Steve and Mary relocated to the States and continue their mission work as part SIM’s Health Ministries Team. They recruit, prepare and journey with healthcare workers, helping them flourish as they make disciples of Jesus Christ in communities where he is least known.
The connections made after many years of faithful service are continuing to bear fruit. Steve and Mary’s background in South America have enabled them to link Esther, a dentist from Bolivia, with a family in Peru who make trips out into the countryside to give dental treatment to Quechua villages. As a native Quechua speaker and with a heart to use her profession for mission work, Esther will make a valuable addition to the trips.
That’s what I like about my job – being able to network people that we’ve known, people that we’ve discipled in the past in Bolivia with people who are using their vocation in healthcare ministries to make disciples of Jesus Christ. Join them up to see even more fruit from what they do.
Pray for Steve:
- As he shifts from working overseas to an office-based role supporting those going on mission.
- For the set of guidelines the Health Ministries team are creating for how to do Healthcare Ministries well – that field testing goes well, and these can be implemented soon.
- That the document will be useful to those working in many countries around the world.