For Roan Elford, joining NCEM
was like going home. "It was based on a feeling of my comfort
zone," he admits. It was much later, he says, that he allowed God to
show him his need to truly submit to Him.
In 1953 Roan moved west from
Ontario with his missionary parents, Bud & Marge Elford. He remembers
childhood days in Buffalo Narrows (SK) and Churchill (MB). His early teen
years in Brochet (MB) he describes as "exciting, with many hours
spent hunting and fishing."
Roan left home at age 14 to
attend high school and says from then he grew up rather independently. He
attended two other high schools before graduating from Caronport (SK)
High. He then attended Ontario Bible College.
That is where he met Pat who
grew up in a Christian home in southern Ontario and came to personal faith
in Christ as a child. She'd planned to go to nurses college, but went to
Bible college first.
Missions was not a new thought
to her. The church she grew up in was "very missions minded,"
and her parents had been personal friends with NCEM missionaries who
visited their home. As Roan and Pat considered their future together, Pat
was still thinking of missionary nursing, but Roan wanted to go North. So
Pat spent a summer with NCEM as a test. "God gave me a love and
appreciation for the Native people," she says, "and for
Roan!" They were married soon after.
The Elfords first served among
the Denesuline people at Stony Rapids in Saskatchewan's far north, then
they took a special assignment with NCEM, helping train new missionaries.
"It was based on a 'chronological'
approach to Bible teaching," he explains, "starting in Genesis,
emphasizing God's character, nature, man's sin, the broken relationship
between man and God, and the need for repentance." This was teaching
for unreached First Nations people, but Roan realized that he himself had
never fully repented of his own sin. "As a missionary, pride
prevented me from repenting," he says. But in 2001, through a crisis,
his pride was broken and he experienced what he describes as victory and
new life.
By then they were serving at
Lac La Biche (AB), where Roan was Business Administrator and Pat an
instructor at Key-Way-Tin Bible Institute. In 2008 they moved to Prince
Albert where they now serve in NCEM leadership, Roan as Chief Financial
Officer, and Pat as Executive Secretary and Candidate Coordinator.
