My duties as Area Business Manager involve serving as a link between our mission staff on the field and our national office in Minneapolis with support schedules, salary distributions, and financial reports to the national office from the countries that have national registrations and mission bank accounts. These countries include Japan, the Philippines and Hong Kong & Macao and Mongolia. I also work with our staff in Taiwan and the two Creative Access countries as well. The analogy I often share is that a soldier on the front lines needs three soldiers working in support roles to enable him to succeed.
Keeping track of financial information for each missionary is an important part of my work. I have literally thousands of messages many of which contain attachments of spreadsheets or Word documents that I often need to access. Categorizing and filing messages after they have been acted upon is a very important task performed nearly every day.
It is also my responsibility to see that funds to our work in Hong Kong and Macao are wired each month to the appropriate bank. These funds are for the special projects such as the Evangel Children's Home, the Evangel Seminary, the Evangel Hospital and the medical outreach project called Medicare Resources.
Another major part of my work involves the on-going task of financial record-keeping making sure each missionary's ministry account is adequate for their work. We are completing a year-long process of a major accounting system change at the national office and I still feel I am in the learning curve for this.
In the end it is such a great blessing to be a part of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.
(Updated March 2009)