Jim and Kathy Radcliffe - Missionaries to New Guinea

Jim and Kathy Radcliffe went to Papua New Guinea (PNG) in 1985 where Jim is serving as a general surgeon at the hospital in Kudjip.  Jim is a 1976 graduate of MVNU as well as a 1979 graduate of Ohio State University.  Kathy attended MVNU for 2 1/2 years ('74), transferring to OSU and graduated in 1977 with a degree in Medical Dietetics.

Early in their lives as children, reading the children missionary books, they felt God might use them on the mission field.  Later as teens, both of them felt a definite call for missions after hearing missionary speakers.  During Jim's senior year at OSU, they both spent two months in PNG.  For the next five years, Jim was in surgical residence at Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus.  After practicing surgery in Xenia, OH for one year, they were appointed as missionaries to PNG.

Along with being a surgeon at the hospital, he and Kathy also serve on the orientation team for new missionaries and volunteers.  They also teach and share in local churches, Jim many times bringing the Sunday morning message. Jim says the greatest challenges of his work are the constraints of time, shortages of medicine and supplies, inadequate funding for the hospital, backward trends in development, unstable government and the need for better village relationships.  "Despite all this, God is at work and supplies our needs and shows his power.  We rejoice when souls are saved and bodies are miraculously healed.  To share alongside our national staff and witness their commitment is a rich blessing as well.”

The Radcliffes have been involved with mentoring young people called to medical missions, including several groups from MVNU.  They have been “missionary in residence” at MVNU with Jim also teaching in the science department when they have been home on furlough.  They have six children:  Ben (22), Bekah (20), Tim (15), Priscilla (11), Josiah (6), and Lydia (4).