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Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 Oct 2017

Her Irish Christian name reflected her ancestry, but she died with a traditional Batak scarf (ulos) around her neck, signifying her adoption into the Hasibuan clan during her time working in North Sumatra, Indonesia.

Converted at the age of 15 through the ministry of Humphrey Newman at St John’s Church Welling, she went to university in Leeds, then taught RE in Yorkshire. After further study at London Bible College she was sent to Asia with OMF in March 1969 by Sidcup Baptist Church. She served in Bandung, West Java, as a lay Elder in the Gereja Kristen Indonesia, whose members were mainly Chinese. She preached, taught and counselled regularly in the congregations, but her greatest ministry was to students and other young people.

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 Mar 2017

In the 1960s and 1970s two remarkable men led OMF International. The General Director was Michael Griffiths, the public face of the mission. The other was the Overseas Director, Denis Lane, who was responsible for its daily running. He was the man who turned vision into reality.

Born in Worthing, in 1949 he graduated from London University with a Law degree. The next year he started training for CofE ministry at Oak Hill. The Vice-Principal at the time was Alan Stibbs, who had served with OMF’s predecessor, China Inland Mission. Denis then went to a curacy in Deptford while completing the London University BD. A second curacy followed in Cambridge before, in 1960, with his wife June, he joined CIM/OMF to serve in Malaya. Isabel Kuhn’s book Ascent to the Tribes was instrumental in leading them to this ministry. They went with their young son and spent six years in the South Perak district.

Ray Porter

Date posted: 1 Jan 2017

Adèle MacBeath was set on an academic career in the early 1960s. An MA graduate from Glasgow University with a double first, she then completed an MLitt on the Italian author Lampedusa and had embarked on doctoral studies in Rome when God intervened to redirect her life into missionary service.

She had fallen in love with David Ellis, a student at the Bible Training Institute, where her father, Andrew MacBeath, was Principal.