Mission Profile:
Forrest and Kristina Hendrix

Greater Europe Mission

Address in the States:

11286 Chertsey Lane
Jacksonville, FL 32223

Phone:
904-240-1489

Email Forrest: fhendrix@gemission.com
Email Kristina: kristinahendrix@hotmail.com

Birth dates:
Forrest: 5-7
Kristina: 7-22
Aron: 3-21
Joel: 5-9
Anna: 6-3

Ministry Focus

Regional Director for the Nordic/Baltic countries.
Evangelism/Church Planting in Sweden.

Personal Journey

Call to Christ: Forrest: I became a Christian at the age of 16.  I attended church, but never heard a clear message of the Gospel.  My sister became a Christian and invited me to a youth Bible study.  I noticed the young people had something I didn’t – like meaning to life, but was not ready to respond when they gave the clear gospel message.  Through reading Billy Graham’s book, The Jesus Generation and later seeing a Billy Graham Crusade on TV, I prayed the sinner’s prayer.  I called up that youth Bible study leader and he began discipling me.

Call to Missions Service: As a young Christian I really enjoyed evangelism. The guy who discipled me had the gift of evangelism and later I realized that I did too. Although I saw my high school as a mission field, I never really considered ministering anywhere else in the world.

After high school, I attended the Torch Bearer Bible Institute in England where Kristina and I met. Our friendship grew and a year later I asked her to marry me. We moved to Sweden where Kristina was studying to be a nurse and I worked at a furniture factory as I was learning the language and the culture. When Kristina finished training, we both attended and graduated from Greater Europe Mission’s Bible Institute in Sweden.

While I lived, worked, and studied in Sweden, I realized that there were not as many Christians there as there were around me where I lived in America. I realized at this time that Sweden was a mission field. I got my Masters at Dallas Theological Seminary and was asked to return to serve in Sweden with Greater Europe Mission. As I prayed about this, God put a deep desire in me to minister in Sweden.

The call to work in Sweden specifically has over the years grown to a desire to minister in Europe in general. We have worked with GEM for 26 years. We first lived and worked in Sweden, working at a Bible Institute and then moved to Latvia after the collapse of the Soviet Union to work with Church Planting and Evangelism. At present I work as a regional director for Greater Europe Mission in The Nordic Baltic countries looking after the work that we are already involved with there and looking for new opportunities to assist national Christians in the work of the Kingdom of God. Kristina and I are again living in Sweden and have been involved in a local church plant in Stockholm with a Swedish Denomination that has asked Greater Europe Mission for help. 

Fruits of Our Labor

1.      For the last 17 years Kristina and I have been involved in 4 church plants: 3 in Riga and 1 in Sweden. The first two, which we helped and assisted in, have now become a part of the Baptist Union of Latvia. The third church plant saw a number of young people become Christians,  but did not make it as an actual church plant. The small group joined another church, and worked and worshiped together with them. The fourth that we were involved with in Stockholm is still going well. 

2.      Riga, capital city of Latvia, is over 800 years old. Only 34 of those years have seen independence. For the 60 years Latvia was part of the former Soviet Union evangelism had to be done very carefully and Christians in general were not treated well. In 1999, I was able to help get GEM involved in the largest evangelistic outreach that has ever been held there. We invited Luis Palou to come and be the main speaker. Through this evangelism event we saw many Latvians come to know the Lord.

3.      In 2002 I was asked to be a regional director for Greater Europe Mission in the Nordic Baltic region of Europe. I started traveling in this region looking for opportunities that Greater Europe Mission could assist national Christians in the work that they were involved in. I am excited to say that there are national Christian denominations and organizations that are open for Greater Europe Mission to help them in the work of evangelism and planting. As of this year we will have workers in four of the eight Nordic/Baltic countries. My goal is to see our missionaries in each of the eight countries.

4.  In the church plant in Stockholm Sweden that we were/are involved with, we have had opportunities to share our faith with many nationalities. Stockholm has become a multicultural city and in the area we live there are many immigrants from the Middle East. Our church plant is being very missional in the type of work that we are doing there. Our church plant was meeting on Sundays in a local Pub that we were renting for the Sunday service, it now meets above in the Red Cross office and conference center (above what used to be the pub, it burned and is being renovated!)  It is in the middle of a shopping mall that all people must go through in order to get on and get off the city subway. This gives us a high profile in the community. We also started a youth café to help the community by giving the youth a place to hang out on Saturday nights and we also served coffee late Saturday nights between two local bars in order to help keep the area calm near the subway entrance and to meet as many people as we could in our part of Stockholm. We did this work to help the community but also to open the door for opportunities to share the gospel. Many of these ministries have continued during the two years of our state side location.

Financial Needs

$1,600 per month.

Gifts can be sent to:
Greater Europe Mission
18950 Bast Camp Road
Monument, CO 80132-8009

(Please put our name in the memo section.)

Prayer Requests

• Our whole family’s walk with the Lord, that we would be 100% committed to serving Him.
• That we would act and talk like a servant when we are treated like one.
• Financial needs mostly due to the financial crisis and on-going recession.
• For our three children:
  1. Aron is married to Clara, living in Berlin, Germany,and looking for a job in his “field” i.e. environment (he graduated from Lund, Sweden, with a master’s degree in “Sustainability and Development”). In the meantime he bakes and sells pizzas at a Canadian restaurant in Berlin.
   2. Joel who lives with us in Jacksonville and is studying for a bachelor’s degree at University of North Florida. He will graduate this year.
  3. Anna who is living with us and about to graduate from Mandarin High School.
• For our return to Sweden, planned for August, 2010.