We are Ian and Sue Paxton, originally from north east England and currently living in Ottawa, Illinois.
We have both been Christians from an early age, and consider God’s calling and direction to be the most important thing in our lives.
Our move to Ottawa in May, 2018, came about due to a whole chapter of miraculous events, and we are fully convinced that this is where God wants us to serve Him for the foreseeable future.
As well as being involved in many areas of ministry in Christ Community Church, (CCC) we also work outside the four walls of that building: Ian volunteers at PADS, the local homeless shelter, several times a week and also facilitates the ministries of many Christians in the area. Sue is voluntary director of Know Hope, a new initiative which provides peer groups for people with mental disorders. She also attends appointments with Pastor John who is a qualified counsellor, and is learning all the time about this fascinating ministry.
Both of us are keen to work alongside those who are marginalised, and have been part of plans to run a Dinner Church in Ottawa. We are always seeking God for His direction as He guides us to the people we can serve best for Him.
Married in 1981, we spent the following few years leading a youth work at our local church, then co-leading an open youth club which involved some eighty young people from the village where we lived.
In 1983 we became members of the Christian Motorcyclists’ Association (C.M.A.) and spent many years sharing God’s love with bikers at rallies, motorcycle shows and other events around the U.K., riding several hundred miles each weekend and also running a local branch of the C.M.A. We later went on to be part of the National Board of the club, as magazine editors.
Attending a Christian conference in 1982 or 83, we responded to a call to missions. On praying about this, God told us to wait for further instructions, and to continue to do what we were doing until then.
Through a T.V. programme in December 1990, God spoke to us about the terrible poverty in the former communist country of Romania, and made it very clear that we had to go and do something to help. Our first trip took place in May 1991, and we fell in love with Romania and its people. It soon became apparent that God wanted us to serve Romanians full-time, so for the next sixteen years (we left our paid employment in 1993) we made up to five road trips each year in a large panel van, taking essential supplies such as food, clothing, bedding and toiletries to people who were desperately in need of them. As well as distributing all these gifts, we were involved in many projects over the years, often taking other volunteers along to help.
God again spoke to us, asking us to move to Romania to serve Him “on the ground”, so to speak. We moved out in December 2006, and lived in Suceava county for ten and half a years, serving a Gypsy village and running children’s camps in the summer months every year. God also used us to disciple a Gypsy couple who worked alongside us amongst their own people, and continue to serve their neighbours to this day. Sue taught English voluntarily throughout our years there, and for our last year in Romania taught in a Christian school in Iasi, while Ian set up and maintained the computer system for the school.
As mentioned above, our journey to Ottawa was nothing short of miraculous: more of this in my blog, elsewhere on this site.