A Family Mindful of Missions
by Trish Duggan
“God is faithful, and ultimately, He does the growing. He does the calling,” Ryan Wiersma says in response to being asked what he and wife, Janna did to spur all their children on to missions’ service.
The Wiersma family lives in western Michigan and are all Michiganders from birth—all six of them! Ryan, a nurse practitioner and former emergency room nurse serves as a deacon at the family’s home church, Harvest OPC in Wyoming, Michigan. His wife, Janna, is a homeschooling mom to all four of the children: Cullen, 16, Grace, 17, Campbell, 19 and Sawyer, now studying at Grove City College and attending Covenant OPC is 20.
This year all four of the Wiersma kids served on two different 2024 summer OPC short-term mission trips: Team Puerto Rico and Team Thousand Oaks (California). Although Ryan and Janna don’t know of any particular occasion, they intentionally pointed their kids in the direction of missions earlier this year. In retrospect, it may have been a bunch of small influences that led them there.
Janna and Ryan both had some missions awareness growing up. As a kid, Ryan remembers his parents housing missionaries on furlough, which, he says, they still do! Janna’s dad was the state director for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which included summer-long camps as well as evangelistic type events during the school year. At age 17, Ryan went on a mission trip to Russia, where they smuggled 10,000 Bibles into Moscow and was involved with Young Life (a ministry to middle school through college-aged young people). After the two were married, they served through Navigators (a college-aged discipleship group). As the kids were growing up, Ryan was able to volunteer with Hockey Ministries International (an organization which presents the gospel to hockey players.)
Homeschooling allowed Janna to introduce missionary biographies into the children’s curriculum. Additionally, Harvest OPC talked often about missions and held missionary conferences. At these conferences, kids could go into classrooms and learn about missionary life and what missionaries do in countries where governments don’t allow Bibles or where people don’t like Christians. It was during one of those missionary conferences that Campbell, the oldest daughter, had what she believes is her earliest memory surrounding missions, when she met a “missionary kid”. Sometime later, her brother Sawyer brought home a friend, and after some talking, Campbell discovered it was the boy she had met years earlier at the conference, Isaiah Richline, the son of OPC missionaries Mark and Jenny Richline. Little did she know that her brother, Sawyer, and Isaiah had been roommates at the Boardwalk Chapel, along with Elijah Hopp, son of OPC missionaries Ben and Heather Hopp. What a small world!
Grace, the youngest Wiersma daughter and second youngest in the family was drawn towards missions when she saw the impact of the Boardwalk Chapel on her older siblings, Sawyer and Campbell. She then spent two summers at the Chapel with her youth group. The second year she went, the Chapel offered training specifically on the Apostles Creed. Grace said, “I wanted to learn more about all of this. So, while everybody else was out at the beach or napping, I was sitting in the lectures with Jim Zozzaro. It was so good to hear his teaching!”
For Sawyer, a few things contributed to his growing desire to spread the gospel. The Boardwalk Chapel taught him a lot, and that’s where he started feeling called to ministry. “God dragged me by the shirt collar and put me where I needed to be,” he says. After serving at the Boardwalk Chapel with his youth group, he attended one of the Timothy Conferences. Having others around him who had the same passion for spreading the gospel was very influential.
Cullen, the family’s youngest, spent a week this summer helping with Vacation Bible school at Thousand Oaks OPC in California. He says, “I wanted to be of service to the churches around that need help, and I also just wanted to be able to grow in evangelism and to learn more about what we believe in and why.” Next year he hopes to be on the Boardwalk Chapel junior staff. “This summer I realized just how much I enjoy serving the church,” he says.
But serving short-term isn’t entirely characterized by feelings of excitement and joy; there are fears as well. Janna and Ryan are understandably protective of the kids, but as Janna points out, “My kids belong to the Lord and if he is calling them to serve somewhere, I need not stand in their way. It’s hard, but also really sanctifying, because it helps me trust God with them. He loves them infinitely more than I could. They've had such incredible experiences serving in new places. Watching them grow in their faith because of those experiences has been an incredible blessing as a parent.”
Campbell admits her biggest fear in serving was the language barrier, “When I went to the Czech Republic last year, I didn't speak Czech. I wondered how I was going to be able to articulate the gospel to people that don't speak the same language.” She soon realized she couldn’t do that alone, “That's why you don't go by yourself, but with a team. When I was in the Czech Republic, there were team members fluent in Czech, and a lot of the Czechs actually spoke English. When we went to Puerto Rico we had [leader] William [Devenney] on our team, and he was fluent in Spanish. We also had Evan Wheat, who, although not fluent, knew enough that enabled him to communicate with people. So, you really can benefit from and be a benefit to the trip, even if you really don't know the language.”
Leaving the comforts of her Christian home to serve the lost in places like the Boardwalk Chapel was also hard for Campbell, “Experiencing the hostility that the world has towards Christ, seeing that there's so much sin in the world, but also realizing that I'm just as sinful—it was really convicting. It is all uncomfortable in the moment. But that's why we have Christ's comfort of our salvation.”
Ryan points out that another possible hesitation is fear of man. “Because we don't want to be rejected, or we don't want to experience discomfort, we might not even take advantage of the opportunity. Yet, how can we not have a desire for people to know the truth and to try to show them that there is salvation from being eternally separated from God?”
In previous years Sawyer has served at the Boardwalk Chapel and admits there were ups and downs. “While I was there I had one of the most significant periods of doubt in my faith. People on the Boardwalk challenged me. There's really no way to prepare for all the things that people say.” But through those trials, God was sanctifying him. “Through many genuine conversations with people, my faith was strengthened in the end. I knew what I believed because I had defended it. I think God has really used my experiences and different facets of gospel ministry to shape me and push me to put away sins in my life.”
These trips also helped to broaden Sawyer’s view of the church as a larger body. “My [recent] trip to Puerto Rico really helped me see the broader church, helped me feel more connected to it, and got me outside of my bubble. Being able to worship in a language that I didn't know, but being familiar with the tunes and liturgy of the service made me realize that these people are my brothers and sisters, even if I can't speak to them in their language,” he said.
Because of her service, Campbell’s prayer life has grown in depth and consistency. She says, “My prayers are so much deeper. Every time I return from a trip, I come back with a new-found love for praying and reading God's word, sharing my concerns and my burdens with him, as well as praising him for this salvation that he's given to me and to my brothers and sisters across the world.”
As far as the future, Sawyer says he hopes to pursue ministry in some capacity in the OPC or another Reformed denomination. “I want to preach and shepherd God’s flock.” Grace and Cullen say they are open to wherever the Lord leads them in their future, and Cullen admits he has a new-found appreciation for the state of California. Campbell hopes to someday pursue the same mission field as her mom, raising children to love and serve the Lord in whatever they do.
Janna and Ryan say that there’s no perfect formula for raising your children to love and serve—that is all the Lord’s doing. But Ryan is grateful for things they’ve enjoyed over the years, like presbytery family camps. “It enabled my kids to see that the church is bigger than their church.” Janna is grateful for the regional church and the opportunities it has afforded her family to get to know and relate to different church families.
Ryan whole-heartedly rejects the idea that they are a “super mission” family and that any act of his or Janna’s led their children’s desire to serve or their walk with the Lord. Family worship and guarding the Lord’s Day from outside activities, including sports, have been gifts the Lord has given their family over the years. He believes these practices helped to nurture the love of Christ in his kids. “The fact that each of our kids are currently walking with the Lord is all of Him,” he says.
OPC Short-Term Missions is grateful for those who make missions a priority. If you’d like to learn more about what’s available for 2025, check our website: opcstm.org/opportunities or email us: opcshorttermmissions@opc.org.