global impact

At Mountain Life Church we envision a world of hope where people and communities thrive through the saving grace of Jesus Christ. We believe in focusing our global outreach efforts for a lasting impact in God’s Kingdom by building relationships where people and communities experience the reconciliation of broken relationships, restoration of hope and health, and the dignity of following Jesus.

At any given time we support 10-12 individual missionaries globally and maintain several strategic partnerships in Haiti, Indonesia, South Africa and Nepal. We actively encourage our congregation to be the hands and feet of Jesus so that, “…they may have life and have it to the full.” Take a look below to learn more about how you can get involved globally, how you can be part of our Global Impact Team or to learn about and pray for our global partners.

Another way that we are reaching out with the love of Christ is through our partnership with ReachGlobal Crisis Response. Learn more about our Crisis Response Team at the bottom of this page.

The Global Impact Team is a group of lay leaders tasked with managing, growing and nurturing Mountain Life’s Global Impact Ministry. The purpose of this ministry is to effectively share the Gospel of Christ with the people of our world through compassionate and wholistic ministry changing the lives of those served and those serving. We accomplish our purpose through strategic partnerships with missionary organizations, individual missionaries and church organizations around the globe.

The Global Impact Team meets monthly and our meetings are open to all who call Mountain Life Church their home.
We offer members of the Mountain Life Church community the opportunity to enter service to develop a passion for God and compassion for people. We strive to provide accessibility to the mission field for a wide spectrum of the Mountain Life Church family – adults, students, kids and families through short-term mission trips. We want to leverage our spiritual and physical gifts and talents to have a true Kingdom impact.

Wes & Leah serve as digital missionaries with Cru, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, at their global headquarters in Orlando, FL. As digital missionaries, Wes and Leah work to leverage technology and the internet as global platforms to give every person in the world an opportunity to know Jesus. Over 50% of the world’s population now uses the internet, and over 73% of the world has some form of a mobile device. As more and more people live their lives online, God has sent Wes and Leah to the digital world to share the good news of Jesus and activate Christians to fulfill the mission of making Christ known to all people. Wes and Leah began serving full-time with Cru in 2016, and prior to that, worked in the corporate world with Fortune 500 companies in Lexington, Kentucky. Wes was a Data Scientist with a degree in engineering and a background of building tech startups and digital marketing. Leah was a User Experience Designer also with a degree in engineering and a background of business analysis. In 2015, they received a clear, joint call from the Lord to leave their careers and apply their technical skills as digital missionaries at Cru. Leah was raised in Park City and was a member of Mountain Life for the majority of her life before leaving for college in Boston, MA. After college, Leah’s first job landed her in Kentucky, Wes’ home state, where she met Wes through their church. They consider it a true blessing to now be sent out from the church family that was so foundational in Leah’s faith, and to serve as MLC’s ambassadors for Christ in the global digital world. 

Dave and Wendy both grew up in California. From the time Dave was very young, he knew he wanted to be an artist. He has been an illustrator all his life, and began to follow Jesus Christ in 1979. Wendy committed her life to Christ at a young age, and had an early interest in writing, film, and world cultures. In 1990, their lives were forever changed when they attended a missions course called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement. Feeling the call into full-time missions, in 1997 they joined Youth With A Mission (YWAM). One year later they moved their family to Asia to learn Chinese and plant churches among an unreached people group. They began developing media tools to reach the this group with the gospel while hosting teams and discipling believers. In 2007, Dave and Wendy joined Create International (a global ministry of YWAM) in Chiang Mai, Thailand, to develop contextually relevant evangelistic films for unreached people groups. In Thailand, Dave pioneered the School of Cartooning and Animation for Missions (SoCAM) while Wendy produced a variety of films. Four years later, the founders of Create International asked them to pioneer a new Create International Center in Taipei, Taiwan. Since founding Create International Taiwan in March 2013, they have been building a creative team of artists and media experts to produce cross-cultural evangelistic films to help reach the unreached, while continuing to run the School of Cartooning and Animation for Missions. 

MLC has participated in outreach in Indonesia for a number of years. During that time we have established relationships with outreach partners and villagers on this enchanting archipelago of nearly 18,000 islands. With our partners, MLC has been able to serve our Indonesian brothers and sisters by coming alongside them through yearly short-term trips and the generous financial support of MLC. Our partners and MLC reach out to the locals in cities and remote villages by following our Community Health Education (CHE) outreach philosophy. Through CHE Indonesians are empowered, with assistance from our partners and MLC, to identify and resolve their most significant health, employment, and environmental problems in an holistic manner. They then are trained to pass on their experience to others so that the holistic successes are multiplied as they pass from one village to another.  

Gary and Paty work with Centers of Church Based Training (CCBT), which focuses primarily on the areas of personal discipleship and evangelism in and through the local church. They believe local churches are responsible to share the Good News with the lost, equip believers to maturity, train godly leaders, and to send people out to plant more churches. As a ministry, CCBT and the Jones' strive to come alongside churches to help them in this process. In their next chapter in the Dominican Republic, Gary and Paty plan to continue their work with discipleship and evangelism, but now with the goal of church planting. 

Bibiana was born in Argentina and studied Medicine there. She was called to the mission field while finishing her Residency in Internal Medicine and went to Haiti in 1988 for the first time, where she met her husband Alexander (Sandy, from Canada). They have adopted daughters, (now grown with their own children), and two biological sons, Kyle and David. Bibiana learned about Community Health Evangelism (CHE) in 1993, attending a Training of Trainers as a translator from Spanish into Creole, and she was convinced this was the approach she should take in ministry among the Haitian people. She delegated her responsibilities at the local clinic to the nurses in charge and dedicated full time to develop CHE in Haiti. Bibiana and Sandy joined Medical Ambassadors International (MAI) as full time workers in 1999. The family moved to Dominican Republic in 2003, where CHE has grown into a fruitful ministry active in eight communities. In December 2005 we were asked to be Coordinators of the South America and Caribbean region for MAI. MAI provides updated lessons, site visits, training and consultation to local leaders that are focusing their ministries in Holistic Development, with the desire to see Jesus saving people as they come closer to His Kingdom as a community. The Mac Leod family live in Atlantic Canada while their boys are attending school, but Bibiana spends part of her time traveling to the different countries where CHE is active or there are interested leaders asking to be trained. 

Pastor Rajan and Indu Neupane, are Nepalese Christians (sent out by Greater Grace Fellowship, Mumbai) with a burden to reach the country of Nepal with the Gospel. Currently, Pastor Rajan oversees 25 churches in Nepal along with running a Bible school, Hope Family orphanage, presenting the Jesus film, distribution of the Bible and teachings on SD cards and a Gospel radio program called Prem Ko Sandesh (Message of Love) that covers the entire country and has brought thousands of Nepali to Jesus over the years. In 2010 the concept for a Nepali training center/church in Kathmandu was conceived. The training center was completed in 2013. Today 40 Nepali are being trained as pastors at the training center. Some of the students came to know Jesus through Radio Nepal. In the last ten years Pastor Rajan’s church (Greater Grace of Kathmandu) has grown from 80 to 350 and church plants increased from five churches to over 35 churches, including three in Kathmandu. Pastor Rajan has a vision to have a Greater Grace Church in every one of the 75 districts of this Himalayan country. Mountain Life Church introduced Community Health Evangelism (CHE) to Pastor Rajan in 2014. CHE is a Christ-centered program that equips communities to identify issues and mobilize resources to achieve positive, sustainable change. In the process, the gospel is shared bringing many to Christ. People and communities are transformed as people come to Christ and work together to address local needs. 

Suzan continues to do ministry in Mumbai at the Greater Grace Church and related orphanage. She travels to mission sites in India and Nepal and encourages all the Christian workers. She is staying strong in the Lord after the homegoing of her pastor-husband, Karl Silva. We have been partnering with Suzan for over 20 years and are amazed at her heart for reaching the lost.

Dennis has been a pastor in two dynamic churches in California for 21 years. When serving as lead pastor at the Community Covenant Church in Santa Barbara, God gave him and his wife Susan a great vision and heart for South Africa, which led to the Wadley’s taking a huge step of faith in founding Bridges of Hope South Africa in 2003. Since then, God has used the Wadley’s in founding Bridges Academy, an orphan boarding school and leadership development retreat center and in co-directing multiple Community Development (CHE) projects in South Africa. Their influence has spread to Ethiopia where they started a Masters Program for the Orthodox Theological College in Mekele in 2009 to train Ethiopian pastors in practical ministry. Besides their work with Bridges, they travel the world training Christian leaders in the CHE model of Community Development. Mountain Life Church has had the privilege of partnering with Bridges of Hope over the past decade and love what God is doing through Bridges. 

After 28 years as a pastor, Steve now serves as CEO of 21C International, a ministry committed to encouraging, equipping and empowering Christian pastors and leaders in developing nations. Steve was the Executive Pastor at Mountain Life Church for nine years. During that time, both he and Leanne worked with our mission partners around the world. They learned that 95% of pastors in the developing world have no training, so they created a process to provide easy access to the training these pastors so desperately need. Using social media, print resources, and on-site training seminars, 21C International is currently serving over 11,000 leaders in more than 100 nations. Steve and Leanne are both Lead Trainers with the ministry, which includes resource development as well as on-site training events around the world. Their two adult children now live in Arizona and Michigan. Steve and Leanne live in Florida.