Ashley grew up attending Journey and moved to Panama in September of 2021 to serve as a missionary. Her primary focus in her first year has been learning Spanish and Panamanian culture. 

Her current ministry in Panama is primarily centered around discipleship and leadership development. She and her team do this by encouraging people to take their next steps in global missions. They are laying groundwork to provide opportunities for Panamanians to engage in global missions in their own country and around the world. 

Her team is in the process of developing a missions society, Sociedad Latinoamericana de Misiones, to support local churches and pastors as they equip those in their own congregations to the mission field. 

Emily is a missionary in Panama, and has been since 2014. She is originally from Lee’s Summit and Journey is her home church. 

Panama is home to around 300,000 Chinese, and because of this, she serves in both Latin and Chinese contexts. She and several others have partnered to help equip churches, disciple and train leaders, support church plants, and mobilize missionaries. 

They are doing this by establishing a missions society called Sociedad Latinoamericana de Misiones. This will help educate and provide training for churches in Panama to be able to send out missionaries. She also serves through a local church, guiding church members through their own spiritual journeys. 

Journey has been blessed to partner with Tami in ministry for many years. Tami grew up on the campus of a missionary training center in Lake of the Ozarks. For 18 years she served in Southeast Asia Mainland, where she was a teacher and director at a Christian school that served children of missionaries from countries all over the world. 

In 2020, Tami was asked to join a small team to update a program that her mission organization uses, bringing her back to Missouri. Since then, she has been working on that program, which will help missionaries learn the heart language and culture of the people they are reaching before they teach God’s Word. The materials will be used by thousands of missionaries from many different countries. 

Our global partners located in the Middle East have lived in Turkey since 2020. They currently live in an area where only 0.5% of people identify themselves as Christians, and the threat of persecution for being a Christian is high. At times, it’s an incredibly isolating experience for them, both spiritually and culturally. 

They are currently 2.5 years into a seven-year process of learning their country’s language so they can clearly share the Gospel in the Turkish language. Their long-term goal is to plant churches in the town they are in, and see believers gathered worshipping the name of Jesus. 

Everyday life for them consists of raising their four kids, meeting with a small group of friends who don’t yet know the Gospel and building relationships with their neighbors.