Richard and Martha Menees

Serving In: Diocese of Kigezi, Southwestern Uganda

SAMS Role: Missionaries

Home Church: All Saints Anglican Church, Bakersfield, CA and St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, Tustin, CA

Starting Year with SAMS: 2013

Calling to Ministry: Richard accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior more fully fifty-three years ago at Stanford.  God called him again  three years later, while walking the John Muir Trail in the High Sierra.  This call was to be a minister of the Gospel and leave the mountains to go low where the people were.  That led to mission with orphans in Italy, seminary in Massachusetts, Europe and Israel, and ordinations in Italy and Congo.  Next came ministries in New England, Zimbabwe, South Africa, California, Uganda, Iraq, Nepal and Egypt. God now calls Richard and Martha to the Ugandan Diocese of Kigezi.

Before the age of five, Martha had a vision of caring for orphans in sub-Saharan Africa.  As an adolescent she was riveted by slides from her pastor’s mission trip to Southern Rhodesia.  As an unbelieving young adult, she told a co-worker that she wanted to be a missionary.  At thirty Martha came to faith in Jesus Christ.  She met with a diocesan officer who handed her an application for a short-term mission to Zimbabwe.  That mission renewed her life.  She knew she would return.  In 1990 Martha married Richard Menees, joining him on the mission field in Zimbabwe, where her dream of becoming a full-time missionary was launched.

Mission and/or Vision for Ministry: By prayer, under the guidance of The Fuller School of World Mission and Leadership Professor J Robert Clinton, Richard and Martha have come to understand that their mission on earth is to make the Anglican Communion more missionary.  In recent years they have been called to a more ordered rule of life and prayer in the spirit of Dr. Greg Peters’s thesis,  The Monkhood of All Believers.   In the Diocese of Kigezi, Richard and Martha look forward to spreading mission-mindedness by training mission leaders at Bishop Barham Theological College (UCU) and helping Bishop Gaddie Akanjuna further develop the prayer, retreat and conference center on Bushara Island in Lake Bunyoni.

Personal Points of Interest: Richard is a life-long body builder and power lifter with a California state championship in the bench press.  He is learning lapidary and creates jewelry and pectoral crosses from diverse rocks and minerals.  Richard’s recent reading includes: Dante’s Divine Comedy, Carl Truman’s, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, and C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.

Martha is interested in healing, nutrition, all things  naturophathic, and inner healing prayer.  She is committed to training caregivers to love their clients with the love of Christ.  She would like to raise awareness to the shunning that many people with dementia suffer.  Who is my friend?  

Favorite Bible Verse: Richard: Mark 13:10  “And first the Gospel must be proclaimed to all nations” Martha: Romans 12:2 “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.  Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is His good pleasing and perfect will.”