John and Linda Spriegel
God calls people to Himself, and to missions, in unique ways. For Linda, growing up in a Christian home and being exposed to missions early on facilitated her hearing God’s call to missions at the age of eleven. God confirmed that calling during her college days. Linda then ventured to Zaire as a single missionary and served for ten years in nursing education, discipleship, and administration.
God used John’s need for a clergy reference for his Eagle Scout badge to get him to attend church as a teenager. There he met Jesus Christ, and his life was changed. He first became interested in mission work when a missionary doctor working in India visited his home church. In college, John helped in a clinic for the poor in rural Mississippi, helping him visualize the possibility of sharing the Gospel cross-culturally through medical care. He completed his training in internal and preventative medicine, and then God confirmed his call to serve Him overseas, at the time when the AIDS epidemic was mushrooming. At that time, John felt keenly his need for a wife of like mind. And voila! Through a mutual friend, God led John and Linda together.
Five years into their marriage, God sent them to Africa for an initial two-year term. After serving in a very rural hospital in Zaire for a year, war broke out, and they were evacuated, ending up in Kenya at Tenwek Hospital for their second year of service. Here John’s gifts were well-used in training African medical interns, and there was a wonderful Christian comradery with missionaries and Kenyans. They had found their team, WGM, and a place to use their gifts.
John and Linda returned to Kenya with World Gospel Mission as full-time missionaries in 2005 with their three children. They had an idea of their future roles in treating patients, training medical interns, and homeschooling their children, but they had no idea of the amazing ways God would stretch them and teach them. Over the next seventeen years, their small steps of faith resulted in great impact for the kingdom of God.
What began as a humble Bible study with Linda and two women, God developed into the Tabitha Ministry. The one study grew to fifty studies and eventually to two hundred fifty village Bible studies, with over 2000 women involved in studying God’s Word each week. Women were eager to study God’s Word and to teach others. Leaders were trained. Many women and their families met Jesus. And God’s work expanded, in close partnership with local churches. The women earned Bibles through a Scripture memory program, eventually meeting 15,000 women’s desire to have their own Bible. As the work grew, Linda wrote and then published Bible studies to be used in the ministry and for the wider church family. In partnership with local churches, hundreds of cow and house projects were completed, touching needy families with the visible love of Christ. Linda’s joy was seeing the Kenyan leaders of Tabitha committed to studying and teaching God’s Word and seeing the church grow in their commitment to compassionate ministry among the poor.
God opened up many diverse areas for John to be involved at Tenwek Hospital. John’s main passion was training Kenyan medical interns. Over the years, at least three hundred interns and residents rotated through his ward, being called to high standards of medical care combined with spiritual outreach to the patients and families. Many of these young doctors and clinical officers are now leading departments at Tenwek or other health care facilities, spreading the Gospel wherever they serve and training others to share Christ through excellence in compassionate care.
Over the years, John was invited to develop needed programs and outreaches for Tenwek Hospital. Organizing medical camps for the internally displaced people during the 2008 post-election violence, helping build and open a medical clinic in Bomet, developing the renal and oncology services, and the COVID care unit at Tenwek were just some of his endeavors. Encountering many obstacles along the way, John persevered and worked with multi-disciplinary teams to plan and implement the projects, leaving Kenyan leadership in charge of each project.
Working alongside God’s people with a common passion for seeing others come to know Jesus through compassionate outreach and Bible studies was John and Linda’s greatest joy. Seeing God change lives as they encountered Him through the Word and through their hospital stays was a privilege. And they saw major growth in their own faith and experienced God’s grace and leading in new ways, too, living cross-culturally and serving with fellow missionaries.
Through the years they have recognized the truth of the statement by former missionary to Zaire, Hellen Roseveare: “God didn’t call me to Africa because of what he needed me to do there, but rather because that is the place where he could best accomplish the next thing he needed to do in my life.” John and Linda reflect, “We are humbly grateful for God’s leading in our lives to bring us to Himself, and then to Africa, to WGM and to Kenya, to serve alongside His beloved people.”
In 2023, Linda and John retired to their home in St. Joseph, Michigan, where they have been able to spend more time with their three adult children and extended family. Linda will be involved in co-leading a Bible study locally and will remain available to help the Tabitha Ministry and Africa Gospel Church in any way she can, possibly writing more Bible studies as the Lord leads. John is working part-time as an out-patient doctor and volunteering with ReachGlobal, the missionary agency for the Evangelical Free Church, as a medical consultant for missionaries in North Africa and the Middle East. He also is staying connected with the ministry at Kaboson Pastor’s Training College, participating on the building projects task force. The couple will continue to encourage their daughter Julia as she returns to Kenya as a WGM missionary herself. God has faithfully led them this far, and they are trusting God to show them the good works He has prepared in advance for them, one day at a time.