Stuart Rowell

My father encouraged me to go into the construction industry when I left school and I joined one of the biggest construction firms in the UK after college as a trainee engineer. 

At the time I had no way of knowing that this how this would be used in the future in helping to build the Kingdom of God in Eastern Europe after collapse of Communism in 1990. 

It was a trip behind the Iron Curtain to “smuggle” literature/bibles and a missionary meeting that change the course of my life when the preacher expounded Exodus 3. The call of Moses shook me and I was so astonished that God could be calling me; I baulked at the idea because I felt so inadequate. 

Subsequently I met my wife who is from Northern Ireland in Bible College in Wales, Ellsye is a domestic science( HE) teacher and God has used her gift in hospitality. We have been married now for fifty-three years, have three children and nine grandchildren.

 I need to fill in a few blanks because after a short pastorate in England we moved to Northern Ireland where I renovated an old stone castle that is now a thriving Christian Conference Center. Then I went back into secular employment and started my own business in 1984. 

It was out of this apparent success that God called us both back into ministry to take responsibility for a mission team working in many of the countries of the newly opened Eastern Europe. This meant selling everything, moving to Vienna with our children and despite numerous problems the last thirty-four years have been the best years of my life.

 I once heard a famous Welsh preacher say that one of the few benefits of growing old was you have a better prospective on God’s Providence. For me, the whole of life has been an apprenticeship and the privilege of nurturing new leaders in the Balkans and beyond.