Global Action Partners 

St John’s supports a number of partners working around the world to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. Many of them grew up in our fellowship, and all have a particular link with our church. Details below.
To receive occasional newsletters from them, please complete the form below. You may select as many partners as you wish.

If you would like to financially support our partners working around the world, please see our Global Action Financial Appeal leaflet which is available by clicking here.

John and Sarah Gieske

Sarah grew up in the Wimborne area, John in the USA’s Midwest, and our children in West Africa. We are currently on ‘home assignment’ visiting family, friends and churches in the USA and the UK.
Followers of Jesus are ‘people of the Book’ but many engage best with this Book by hearing it, singing it or seeing it. (How about you?) John helps translation teams think through, create and distribute what they believe will best help their own people hear and understand God’s word. Examples of this year’s work include a film dubbing (God’s Story), a Bible overview series (audio), a radio theatre piece, and a dramatised recording of Exodus with songs.
Sarah educates our three children at home. As a ‘language geek’, Sarah also enjoys proof-checking colleagues’ newsletters and putting together our own news and prayer updates.
Hebrews 11:8-16 may help you pray for us. Pray for refreshment during these months of travelling and speaking and fellowship. Pray that lessons from our first decade here would help us to establish good relationships and family rhythms as we ‘pitch our tents’ in a new city from spring 2024. Most of all, pray that God’s word would be heard and He would draw many people to faith and to lives that are worthy of our faithful God. 

David and Janet Wilkinson

David and Janet have been serving together in West Africa since 2014. David leads the local language  translation team, helping them to translate portions of the Bible into their own language, while Janet now works in finance admin providing support to the various translation projects in the country. Their three children Joel (9), Isaac (6) and Theo (4) are at a local French school there.
Praise God with us that now that Genesis is translated, we’ve been able to produce dramatised recordings and songs about the life of Abraham and dub the “Genesis story” film. Pray that this would help the people to grasp the message of God’s promise of blessing to the nations through a descendant. As we now translate some gospel passages as part of a “Creation to Christ” series, please also pray that they would understand the Biblical message of the need for a Saviour.

Malcolm and Kerstin Gray

WEC International reaches out to people who have limited or no access to the good news of Jesus Christ, particularly where there is no church. It is a global fellowship of 1900+ members from over 70 countries of which UK is one.
Malcolm and Kerstin are co-directors of WEC UK & Ireland responsible for about 100 WEC missionaries serving in the UK, and equipping and supporting about 100 missionaries from the UK serving around the world. Alongside the leadership role Malcolm oversees the Communications department and Kerstin is part of the Member-Care department.
Together, we are committed to mobilise the UK and Ireland churches for world mission, and serve the WEC fellowship through leadership.
For more information about Malcolm & Kerstin and St John's, click here

Nelson family in Paris

Laura was born in Dorset and baptised at St John’s over 40 years ago. Edward, her husband of nearly 20 years, was half-French. They started their work in Paris in 2002, focussed on local evangelism, encouraging church-planting and training gospel workers. Since Edward's death in 2020, Laura has continued working for Ternes Church, on the pastoral team, with an emphasis on local evangelism and training women. She is also on the board of directors of an evangelical French publishing house, and involved in some regional and national initiatives training women and teaching the bible at conferences. Her focus, and that of the children, remains sharing the gospel in a country where there are so few Christians or evangelical churches.
For more information on the Nelsons click here.

Sarah Hopkins

I attended St John’s when I moved back from college to Dorset in 2009. Living and working in Africa has always been on my heart and the right opportunity came for me to move to Cape Town, South Africa in January 2020 and use my Integrative Arts Psychotherapy training and sewing skills.  
The past year has been a time to deepen the relationships I have developed in the Cape Flats. With this being my 4th year here, it is a joy to be feeling settled, well connected in and for people to have built up a trust with me. It has also been a blessing to develop my work with Uturn and run therapeutic support groups for them. The ladies from my sewing group have become a very special group of women to me and I can see how God is working in and through them in many ways. Do continue to pray for them that they can develop the skills they are learning whether this is emotionally, practically or spiritually. Pray that I can continue to use my skills to glorify God through my ministry. Please pray for my safety as I travel around and that I can effectively process and deal with the large amount of trauma I hear and witness. 

Streetlight (Andy Putt)

For those who have not heard of us here at StreetLight, we are a Christian charity, a community project that runs a skate park, cafe and soft play centre in Wimborne. We took on the massive warehouse in 2013 and have had an incredible journey so far.
The last year has been an interesting time for StreetLight as we have seen our impact in the community getting bigger and bigger. We have become a destination for soft play and seen a larger attendance of families with small children. This has given us some amazing opportunities for supporting and building relationships with those families.
For more information on StreetLight and St John's click here.

Carlile College