After 5: A New Kind of Field

Today, she lives in a 1,000-square-foot apartment in China after selling all her possessions and dedicating her life to mission work.

“I went to China because I felt like that’s what the Lord wanted me to do,” says Ereka*, the former BKD accountant, who requested that her last name be withheld. Springfield Business Journal granted Ereka’s request because her work as a Christian missionary is against Chinese law.

Ereka is in Springfield for three weeks, visiting friends and family before heading back to the other side of the world.

Officially, Ereka runs a small business that awards education scholarships to Chinese children. Secretly, Ereka spreads the Christian gospel to the Chinese people, who she befriends.

Though not officially connected, Ereka receives funding from Springfield’s Second Baptist Church.

Ereka was spurred to give up her old life by tragedy. Her sister and best friend, Melanie, died in a car accident in 2003. Ereka visited China on a mission trip in summer 2004 and discovered how she would turn her grief into a positive.

With just two suitcases in hand, she moved to China in May 2005.

“I fell in love with (China),” she recalls. “Chinese people are very hospitable and very, very generous people. At the same time, I was just grieved at the lack of everything that we take for granted – clean drinking water, education, health care and freedoms.”

Many missions

Ereka’s story may be extreme, but many Springfield businesspeople have spent time on mission trips.

Architect and developer Dan Scott, owner of The Design Agency LLC and Jericho Development Co. LLC, travels on mission trips with his wife, Melissa, to Thailand, China, Japan, Russia, Finland, Poland, Germany, Italy, Austria and France.

The Scotts plan to visit Greece and Bulgaria this year.

James and Cassie Olson, owners of Oaxacafe Coffee Co., donate 15 percent of their profits to mission work. They also go to Mexico on mission trips about six times a year.

ServiceWorld Computer Center Inc. owner Doug Pitt and downtown developer Matt Miller went in September to Tanzania. They photographed WorldServe Ministries’ water-well digging efforts in the African nation, and Pitt will raise money for WorldServe Ministries through the sale of 28 photographs from his trip during the Feb. 2 First Friday Art Walk.

The photos will sell for $250 each at Randy Bacon’s Monarch Art Factory, 600 W. College St.

Hair stylist Paul Catlett, owner of Studio 417, recently returned from India, where he worked in a mobile medical clinic, treating native patients for everything from coughs to third-degree burns.

“It was extremely heartbreaking, but at the same time it … builds your faith that there are things that we can do,” Catlett says. “We were basically spreading hope where there is none.”

Catlett plans to return to India in December, and he hopes to raise money and awareness to help stop child sex trafficking in that country.

Dr. Gil Mobley, former owner of Dr. Gil’s Immediate Care, has invested about $300,000 and many days on mission work in Guatemala.

Mobley travels to Guatemala at least every other month, working for the last six years to bring medical care to poverty-stricken people.

He’s also been joined several times by Springfield businesspeople, including Jim Quesenberry of Corporate Business Systems and Jeff Hertell of Kolar Business Machines.

“You can’t deny God’s hand in this,” Mobley says passionately, adding that he started his mission work after a serious Jet Ski accident eight years ago made him reassess his life.

“This is the most awesome thing I’ve ever done in my life, and I can’t stop doing it.”

*Ereka's name is misspelled in order to protect her identity.

Global Impact Celebration

What: Seminars and brunches about Christian mission opportunities. Missionaries, including Ereka from China, will speak.

When: Feb. 2–4

Where: Second Baptist Church, 3111 E. Battlefield Road

Want to Help?

ServiceWorld owner Doug Pitt is raising money for WorldServe Ministries through the sale of 28 photographs he snapped during a mission trip to Tanzania.

The photos will go on sale for $250 each at Randy Bacon’s Monarch Art Factory during the Feb. 2 First Friday Art Walk.

WorldServe Ministries, a Frisco, Texas-based group that plants churches and completes projects in places such as China, Vietnam, Cuba and Ethiopia, would use the money to dig a water well in Tanzania. “You see these women and kids (drinking) dirty water we wouldn’t even wash our cars with,” Pitt said.