From Farming and Freight to Career Missions
Kenny and Cheryl Morris, IMB missionaries to Panama, are far from their Nicholasville, KY roots and the daily farming tasks that once was their life. Members of Mt. Freedom Baptist Church, this lay couple never dreamed that one day that they would be serving the Lord on foreign soil.
Kenny and Cheryl Morris
In 1999, God used Kenny’s participation in a volunteer mission trip to Kenya to call the Morrises, along with seven other couples, to career service. Although the call was clear, the road ahead was not, as several obstacles stood between them and the field. Their three children were beyond the age acceptable to the IMB, and there was concern with the IMB education and experience requirements. Undaunted, the Morrises did not waiver from the call.
In faith, they began to scale down their full time farming operation, and Kenny began working as an independent truck driver to make it easier to transition to career missions when the Lord’s timing was right. Still unsure how to move forward, the Lord confirmed their call as they attended a conference led by Richard Adams of the KBC. They began to pray, “Lord, whatever door you open, we’ll go through it.” That very night, Gary Tufts, the Personalizer for the IMB MAC Region, called the Morrises to say that he had a job in Panama as Operation Go Volunteer Coordinators. “As soon as we heard about the job, we fell in love with it,” Kenny says.
“But would the IMB take us?”, the Morrises wondered. Gary, however, was confident that they would qualify under new, more open IMB requirements. “Gary said, let’s start the process and see what happens,” Kenny recalls, “so we did.” That was in December, and by the following October the Morrises were in Costa Rica to begin Spanish language school.
In their new role, the Morrises are responsible for mobilizing volunteers to reach rural areas of Panama. As a result, the Tates Creek Association, searching for a field partner, were directed to them, and it now appears they are well on their way to forming a new three-year Level Three partnership.
