Age no barrier to extended missions service for East Texas couple

BUNA—William and Wynna Withers never expected to fall in love with the people of Ukraine. In fact, for most of their married life, the couple never imagined leaving their home in Buna, deep in the East Texas Big Thicket.

William and Wynna Withers of Buna heard God’s call to missions in Eastern Europe, and they spent three years serving in Ukraine. (PHOTO/Jennifer Rash Davis/The Alabama Baptist)

They certainly never anticipated moving to Ukraine for three years—especially at ages 65 and 64, respectively.

But they did, and now they are back in the United States, telling everyone they can about the missions opportunities in Eastern Europe.

The couple liked their quiet life. He was a basketball coach and teacher for many years before going into the insurance business. She was a stay-at-home mom but later served as the office manager for her husband’s business. They were faithful church members of First Baptist Church in Buna, where they served in different capacities.

But they came to the conclusion God wanted something more from them.

“I was sitting at my breakfast table the second week of February 1992 reading Open Windows” (devotional guide), Withers said. He prayed for a team that was traveling to the former Soviet Union with a pastor from San Angelo.

“I was sitting there and very clearly I heard, ‘William, I want you to go.’ … I knew it was God, and I was excited,” he said.

After he returned from his first trip to the former Soviet Union, Withers couldn’t say no to going back. He began going on missions trips to that area of the world two to three times a year. It was during this time that God was “training me to be a missionary,” he said.

For Mrs. Withers, the call to missions came a little later.

“When God spoke to William at that kitchen table in 1992, he didn’t say anything to me,” she said. “When (her husband) told me he was going and asked me to go, I said, ‘No, thank you.’ I didn’t want to fly; I didn’t want to leave my kids.”

The Ukraine

While taking a discipleship training class based on Henry Blackaby’s Experiencing God, Mrs. Withers said she realized that without faith, it’s impossible to please God, and God rewards those who earnestly seek him.

“I didn’t want to fly; I didn’t want to go to a country that possibly didn’t have electricity and running water. But (to put) this faith in action, I needed to have that reality,” she said. “William was having all these wonderful experiences, and I wasn’t in any of that. It slowly began to come to me that I was missing out. So I prayed, ‘God, enable me to go wherever you want me to go.’”

About three years later, she went on her first international missions trip to southern Ukraine with her husband and stayed two weeks. From 1995 to 2005, they took about 15 trips but never very long ones.

Then, one day, Mrs. Withers told her husband she thought she could stay for a couple of months next time. But as they were discussing going for a couple of months, they learned about the International Mission Board’s Masters Program, which allows adults 50 years of age or older to serve overseas for two to three years.

“All of a sudden … we were talking about a two- or three-year commitment,” Mrs. Withers said. “I had a peace that I can do this—leave my children. I got the same peace like when I was saved.”

The couple were assigned to Odessa, Ukraine, in October 2005, and their assignment was to assist local churches, especially in regard to evangelism, and coordinate American volunteers who came to work in the area.

After receiving training in Richmond, Va., they went to Odessa in January 2006 but had to return to the United States after only a year for Mrs. Withers to have neck surgery. The couple were allowed to start their term over halfway through 2007.

In 2009, they were asked to move to Transcarpathia, an area in the western part of the country that is home to mainly Hungarian-speaking people.

At first, they were reluctant to leave the relationships they had formed with only a year left in their term. But once they were told that there had been only two teams that had gone to work in Transcarpathia in the past five years, their hearts were broken.

The Witherses moved in August 2009 and worked with the Roma (Gypsies), university students and missions teams from Alabama.

Now back in Texas, the Witherses—who well up with tears every time they speak of Ukraine—plan to travel across the United States telling about God’s work in Ukraine and rallying volunteers and support for Ukrainian churches.

The couple believe they are a testimony God can use anyone no matter how old or settled in life one is.

“I’m not a goer,” Mrs. Withers said. “I like my nest, my ‘mesta’ (the Ukrainian word for ‘nest’ or ‘place’). I didn’t want to leave my mesta. My home was my mesta. But God enabled me to do it, and the more I did it, the more he enabled me and the more his grace grew, and (Ukraine) became my mesta.”