Charles, Ruth and Caleb Beattie are serving in Jos Nigeria

Ruth

Background

I was nine years old when I started my journey with God.  It was then that I was convicted of my sin and realised my need of a Saviour.  During my early teens I remained dedicated to God and wanted to please Him in all that I did.  It was during this stage, at the age of 14 that I first felt God’s call on my life to serve Him on the mission field.  God spoke to me clearly during a sermon conducted by a missionary, who was talking about God’s call to the mission field.  During the service I felt God was directly talking to me about serving Him in this way.  However, during my later teens, this conviction was pushed further and further to the back of my mind as I grew distant from God.  I didn’t intentionally turn away from Him, but after a few difficult experiences in my life, I became discouraged and instead of turning to God for help and trusting Him, I took matters into my own hands.  As I went my own way I gradually grew cold spiritually and turned less and less to God, until I came to a point where I no longer prayed or read God’s word.  When I tried to read or pray, I found I could not, which I realise now was the result of a spiritual battle.  The only thing I was able to pray was that God would help me to return to Him again.  I struggled with this for a few years until finally one evening when I was ill, I turned to God for help.  God’s presence overwhelmed me that night and I knew that God had heard my prayer and had answered it.  I confessed my sin before God and surrendered myself completely to His will.  I have never experienced such joy as I did on that night and in the months to follow.  I started to read and pray again and I experienced God in a way I never had before.  I also became involved in the Young Life organisation which was a great help and blessing to me.  After some time, I again felt God’s call on my life.  I was very anxious not to step outside of God’s will again, so I prayed about this for a long time before approaching the Irish Baptist College.   I was accepted to the college and undertook a BTh and a Missionary Studies course.  It was during my time at college that I met my husband Charles who had a burden for Africa and the South of Ireland. 

 

After finishing bible college training, I worked for a year with Christians Providing Care. It was an organisation which had been set up to help young people who were coming out of the care system to learn life skills and also to provide them with accommodation.  During this time I completed a BTEC National Diploma in Caring for Young People.  I then went to work for Sure Start, a government scheme designed to help disadvantaged families with children aged 0-4 in the areas of education and health.  I worked on this project for 5 years during which I completed a certificate in Community Development, and a drugs awareness and Counselling course. 

Current Work

 

As well as looking after our son Caleb, I am teaching a courses at the Women’s Institute at the JETS Seminary and am really enjoying this.  I have also been helping out with City Ministries at one of the centres, Transition House.  I hope to start a discipleship course with the younger boys soon and I may be able to help out with card making. 

 

Charles.

Background 

When I was five my mother was praying with my brother, sister and I as we went to bed.  She prayed:

 

Jesus tender shepherd hear me,

Bless thy little lambs tonight,

Through the darkness be thou near them,

Keep them safe ‘til morning light.

 

And she stopped there.  I asked her why she didn’t pray the next verse, which went,

 

Let my sins be all forgiven,

Bless the ones I love so well,

Take me when I die to heaven,

Happy there with thee to dwell.

 

My mother asked me if I wanted my sins to be forgiven and I said I did.  I wanted my sister, aged seven, to pray with me, so she led me, and my brother, aged four, in committing my life to the Lord Jesus.

 

As a teenager I prayed and sought the Lord’s will concerning my future and the direction I should go, and in my mid-teens I made myself available to God for full-time Christian service, if he wished.  From early on in Primary School my main interest and ambition had been in art, and the natural expectation for myself, my teachers and friends was that I would go to art college.  However as I prayed about it God very definitely convicted me that I was not to apply to art college and instead led me in the unexpected direction of civil engineering.

 

After my A-levels I began to study civil engineering at Queen University Belfast, but after a year it became clear to me that it was not a profession that I could continue doing for the rest of my life, so I began to pray about whether I should change course and go to bible college or art college.  It was not until I started my second year, and the course workload intensified that things came to a head.  Three weeks into the first term I knew I had to make a decision and one morning instead of going to lectures I went to a room above the Presbyterian chaplaincy coffee shop, got down on my knees, opened my bible and prayed for an answer.  God then confirmed to me that I was to change to Theology, and gave me a confidence and faith, that was beyond myself, to go and make the change.

 

I studied my Bachelor of Theology at Queens through Union Theological college, then completed a Master of Philosophy in Old Testament at Queens, alongside a Diploma in Pastoral Studies at the Irish Baptist College.  It was at the Baptist College that I met my wife Ruth.

 

At the time I wasn’t certain where the Lord wanted me to go.  I had an interest in Africa since feeling burdened for it as a teenager.  This was renewed when a representative of Mission Africa spoke about the mission at the college.  At the same time I had developed an interest in the Republic of Ireland through a number of summer teams I had been on there, and also in Pastoral work.  However, at the time I had no strong leading in any particular direction.  Ruth had been interested in Russia, but a door had closed for her there and she was not sure what was next.  At that time the only strong leading we had was that we should be together.

 

We got married and just over a year later Caleb was born.  By the time my MPhil was completed I had had enough of education for the time being and took a year, working in security, to regroup.  At the time we were looking into a possible work in the Republic but it fell through.  Though I had supposed that we would be working in Ireland for a number of years before going abroad, in the summer of 2005 God convinced me that the time was now right to apply to Mission Africa when I preached a sermon on “I am the Light”.

 

Current Work

At the moment I am preparing to begin lecturing Old Testament at JETS in January. I will be teaching two courses, Pentateuch and Old Testament Poetry. I am also working on a Phd through the Belfast Bible College.