What is "Grace Missions Ministries"?
Grace Missions Ministries consists of two distinct but related organizations:
a) Grace Missions, a sovereign grace missionary sending board.
b) Grace Missions Mozambique, the Christian trustee board of a surgical
hospital, Grace Evangelical Hospital.
Why was it established?
a) Grace Missions was founded in 1985 to send missionaries to Mozambique. Before 1985,
no mission board was active in the country due to government opposition to Christianity.
Softening of the government's position toward Christian work was evident, however.
At the same time, God was calling out missionary candidates to work in Mozambique.
Grace Missions was established as a means of sending these missionaries
to Mozambique and granting them spiritual oversight.
b) Grace Missions Mozambique was incorporated in 2000 to build, own, and operate a surgical
mission hospital in Nampula. From 1990 to 1997, Grace Missions had provided a missionary
surgeon and all the supplies necessary to maintain the surgical block in a local government
hospital. When the Minister of Health granted the Mission's request to establish
its own surgical hospital, Grace Missions Mozambique was set up to oversee the
medical-evangelistic work, freeing Grace Missions to focus exclusively on church
planting and church-related ministries.
The Woodrow family.
Top: Sarah, Benaiah, Grace
Bottom: Kent, Julie, Charles, Andrew
Larry and Venette Stack
Charles and Julie Woodrow, with their five children.
The Woodrow family are members of Faith Community Church in Oxnard, California. Charles is a general surgeon certified by the American Board of Surgery in 1984 and re-certified in 1993. He is a Fellow in the American College of Surgeons.
Charles was sent to the field with his family in 1990. He gained entrance to the country while it was still a Marxist state by accepting a contract to work in a government hospital in Nampula.
The Lord saved Charles at age 20 while a sophomore in college. In August of 1974, a year and a half after his conversion, Charles discerned the Lords call to missions. By October 1985, through a series of compelling circumstances, the Lord directed his attention to Mozambique as his future mission field. Before leaving the States, Charles met and married Julie Marie Vawter in February 1988. Later the same year they left for language school in Brazil and have served in Mozambique since March, 1990.
The Stack Family Dr. & Mrs. Stack are currently preparing to join the team in 2013.
Dr. Larry and Venette Stack are members of Community Bible Church in Nashville, Tennessee where Dr. Stack serves on the elder board. He is an emergency medicine specialist with a special interest in medical education and training medical students and residents.
A former army physician, he has served for the past 15 years on the staff of the Vanderbilt University hospitals and has co-authored several medical texts.