72nd Annual Missionary Conference
April 5-9, 2025
“We send missionaries to all points of the compass.” II Corinthians 5:18-19
The Altoona Bible Church is serious about Outreach. ABC has held a missionary conference every year since 1952 in which missionaries from around the world share with us what God is doing through them. We support a number of Grace missionaries and organizations both regionally and globally.
Schedule
SATURDAY, APRIL 5
- 5:45 PM – Missionary Welcome
- 6:00 PM – Sight & Sound’s Production of Noah
SUNDAY, APRIL 6
- 9:30 AM – Adult Sunday School with Brooke Seekins
- 10:45 AM – Morning Service with Opening Processionals, Missionary Introductions, and Kevin Craesmeyer
- 5:00 PM – 9 in the Air gym activity
- 5:30 PM – Pizza dinner Kids Club and REVIVE
- 6:30 PM – Evening Service with Henry Gonzalez
MONDAY, APRIL 7
- 7:00 PM – Trivia Night & Evening Service with Chetra & Julia Hong
TUESDAY, APRIL 8
- 5:30 PM – Ambassador Class Dinner
- 7:00 PM – Rotations with the Missionaries including the Altoona Rescue Mission and Crossroads Pregnancy Center
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9
- 5:30 PM – Potluck Dinner
- 7:00 PM – Evening Service with Carlos & Denise Brunk
ABC Presents: Sight & Sound Theatres' Production of Noah
The 72nd Annual Missionary Conference will kick off with a free showing of Sight & Sound Theatres’ 30th Anniversary production of “Noah.” Come meet our missionaries and enjoy the show!
Saturday, April 5th, 2025
Doors open at 5:00 PM
Missionary Welcome begins at 5:45 PM
FREE ADMISSION
No ticket needed. Bring a friend!
Brook Seekins - Malawi
Brook Seekins was on her way to Tanzania for the first time on 9/11/2001. Her plan was to serve under GMI teaching missionary children. Soon the Lord opened doors for her to focus on youth ministries. She worked alongside national pastors to establish youth groups in local churches and train youth leaders. Together they ran camps, seminars, and conferences to establish the youth in Gods Word. They were blessed to see young people become faithful leaders of the church through more than 15 years of ministry in Tanzania.
In 2018, Brook joined the GMI team in Malawi. Brook has seen the Lord open doors for her to lead in worship service training, leadership training, and youth leader training. Taking what she learned while working with youth in Tanzania, Brook has been working together with the Malawian youth ministry leaders. Together they have begun to establish local youth groups and train youth group leaders from more than 20 churches around the country as well as running regional Bible conferences for youth. Living in the capital city of Lilongwe, Brook has also helped out with local youth, teaching piano and guitar, as well as leading Bible studies.
She has also been able to help create curricula which is being used to help train national leaders in leading worship services, setting up guidelines for local youth ministries, ministering to youth in regional youth conferences, and teaching Bible studies in their local churches. Brook has been blessed that several of these ministries have started to see fruit and by God’s grace will continue to grow.
Kevin & Beatriz Craesmeyer - Mexico
Kevin was born into a missionary family. His parents, Bernardo and Carol, serve as missionaries in Brazil, following in the footsteps of Carol’s late parents, Warren and Shirley Keiper, also missionaries to Brazil. Growing up in a missionary home gave Kevin a desire to serve the Lord in the same fashion as his grandpa and dad. Kevin has been preparing for this ministry while growing in his relationship with Jesus Christ. At the age of 17, Kevin recommitted his life to serving God and started to actively pursue training and growth in knowledge of the Word so he would be able to serve as a missionary.
Beatriz was raised in Brazil, and when she was in high school, she accepted Jesus Christ as her savior through Kevin’s older brother, who was a teacher at her high school at the time. Her desire to learn and grow as a servant of God has guided her through much change in her spiritual and personal life, and she has become an example of a godly woman to her children. She has a passion for teaching others and sharing what God has done in her life, encouraging others to fulfill the roles that God has given them.
Kevin and Beatriz got married four years after they first met, and shortly after their wedding, they moved to the US with the purpose of preparing for the missionary field. Kevin and Beatriz have four children and plan on having more, as they both come from large families and are passionate about sharing God’s instructions on raising godly families.
Another great passion that Kevin has is the training of the next leaders that God can use in His Church, and because of that, he has pastored a local church. This was a very important experience for the training of leaders and also for planting churches across the world.
Henry & Grettel Gonzalez – Paraguay
Henry and Grettel are from Costa Rica, a naturally tropical country. Since meeting in 1992 and later marrying in 1998, they have shared a common goal: to serve the Lord.
In their early years of marriage, they were actively involved in several ministries, including church planting, youth ministry, Sunday School, Bible study groups at home, and leading worship at church.
In 2006, along with Jeremy Clark, who was then a missionary with Grace Ministries International (GMI) in Costa Rica, and the GMI-affiliated church Comunidad Bíblica de la Gracia, they founded the Grace Bible Institute. Since then, they have worked hard to prepare believers and new leaders capable of sustaining and multiplying the Lord’s work in their countries.
They also have a ministry called: MiDevocional.org, through which they have shared Bible devotionals and other resources with messages of salvation, encouragement, and spiritual growth to millions of Spanish speakers worldwide.
Ever since they were married, they have had a desire to serve the Lord. It wasn’t until 2008 that they began to travel to South America, where they led conferences and workshops on different topics such as discipleship, marriage, dispensationalism and the life of Jesus in countries such as Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. During these trips, they felt called to serve as missionaries in Paraguay and extend their ministry to the surrounding regions.
With hearts full of gratitude and after much prayer, the Lord has led Henry and Grettel to serve in Paraguay, where they plan to disciple men and women, teenagers and children, prepare new local leaders capable of sustaining and multiplying the Lord’s work, and promote Bible study and evangelism through workshops, conferences, and courses at the Grace Bible Institute. They also hope to inspire new church plants in Paraguay and take advantage of their proximity to Brazil and Argentina to begin new mission fields. All for the glory of God.
Sokney “Chetra” & Julia Liles-Hong - Cambodia
Julia was raised in a Christian home near London, England and accepted Christ as Savior in 2005. She earned a degree in Theatre Design and used those skills on several short-term mission trips, including TCM’s Africa Safari in 2009. During that trip the Lord confirmed that He was calling her into cross-cultural ministry, so she enrolled in a missions program at All Nations Christian College. After completing a two-month internship with TCM in Southeast Asia, she applied to be a TCM missionary and hit the ground running in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in September 2015.
Julia plunged directly into language study and was actively involved in the ministries of the Phnom Penh City Central Church. Her heart desire is to see Cambodians of all ages and walks of life enter into the Grace church to hear God’s Word and receive Christ. She longs to see the current believers develop a heart for evangelism despite their cultural shyness.
Sokney “Chetra” Hong is a Cambodian from a very strong Buddhist family. Chetra himself was a committed Buddhist and served as a monk for 5 years from 2006 to 2011. Although he loved everything about Buddhism and thought he was a noble man with few, if any sins, he sometimes wondered, “What is the purpose of my existence?”
In 2012, Chetra started a job teaching in a language school where he was required to join a weekly Bible study. He started learning about the God of the Bible and his students tried to share the good news of Jesus Christ with him; however, he resisted because Buddhism still meant everything to him, and he couldn’t imagine losing the most precious thing in his life. Deep down in his heart though, there was an emptiness seeking to be filled.
Julia enrolled in the language school where Chetra was working in 2017. She shared many Bible verses with him and persistently invited him to church. When he finally agreed to attend a service, Pastor James Bermejo’s preaching answered the questions in his heart about the Bible. By October 2018 Chetra realized he was a sinner who needed to be saved, and he personally accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
Since then, Chetra has completed the Cambodia Grace Gospel Church’s Pastoral Ministry Mentoring Course. He and Julia were married in the UK in April 2022. They moved to the Philippines in June to attend TCM’s 2-month intensive Grace Theological Center for Mission, followed by a year of Bible school training for Chetra and teaching for Julia at International Grace Bible Institute—Tagum.
TCM accepted them as a missionary couple in January 2023 and assigned them to serve in Cambodia.
Carlos & Denise Brunk - Bonaire
I (Carlos) graduated from Grace Bible College (now Grace Christian University) in 1991 with a Bachelor’s degree in Theological Studies. Denise and I married December 23, 1990, on the island of Curacao, and then pastored the Grace Church in Curacao (a Dutch Caribbean island off the coast of Venezuela) for nine years.
After training other men for the ministry and establishing the church organization with elders and deacons, I felt my goals were achieved and the Lord was leading Denise and me towards new things to do for Him. I resigned as pastor to study counseling and to follow the desire to establish a Grace church in the Netherlands. We left the Curacao church stable, healthy, and growing in attendance.
In January 2012, Denise and I felt that the Gemeente de Bijbel (Bible church) was ready to function on its own under the pastoral leadership of the co-pastor, Marshall Look, his wife, Shurenda, and a team of deacons. After praying for a few months the desire grew stronger that it was time to leave the Netherlands. About that same time Denise’s mother called her from Curacao with the news that on the island of Bonaire they were looking for a school teacher. We felt the peace of God in our hearts to live on Bonaire and to start another Grace church on that island. Denise applied for the job as a teacher on the island of Bonaire and she was hired.
We decided to start the Grace church (Ministerio di Grasia Bonaire) in a Community Center in the district of Tera Kora. About 2,000 people live in this area, mostly Antillean people. On Saturday night, September 6, 2013, we showed our first gospel movie in the community. We had our first official church service on Sunday, September 7.
Please keep us in prayer for God to open more doors for us to bring the gospel of Christ to the people living on Bonaire, and for the Lord to send more workers in the field to help us with the ministry.