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GRAND PRAIRIE—Intrigued by the curly-haired girl who couldn’t stop smiling and jumping around like Tigger in “Winnie the Pooh,” Mark Moses recalled the first time he met his future wife Jan and heard her share about her call to missions at a Sunday School class fellowship through his home church, Birchman Baptist in Fort Worth.
Both were attending Southwestern Seminary in the spring of 1983. Moses, a Texas native with a degree from Texas Christian University, and Jan, a Virginia native and a graduate of the University of Virginia, shared a common desire to serve the Lord through missions.
At age 11 Mark’s elementary school paper revealed how early his thoughts turned toward missions as he wrote of his desire to be a missionary when he grew up. He spent a year as a missionary volunteer on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao after his first year of seminary, which only confirmed his calling.
God gave Jan a vision for overseas ministry while working for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in central Georgia following graduation from college as she gave tours to the visiting public, many of whom were internationals.
With missions the topic of conversation and the godly character they observed in each other, Mark and Jan began to sense God’s ability to use them together to more effectively serve him. On Jan’s birthday, Dec. 31, 1983, the two were married and then appointed December of 1985 as Southern Baptist missionaries, moving with 8-month-old son David to the Philippines.
“Jan and I didn’t answer God’s call to missions reluctantly. We didn’t feel forced into it. We never felt it was a sacrifice. We became missionaries for the joy set before us—the joy of being on the front line of missions and partnering with God himself in redeeming a lost world,” Mark wrote.
During their first four terms the couple served in Roxas City and Iloilo on the Philippine island of Panay, and Sara, Hannah, Martha and Jonathan were added to their family. Despite the heat and humidity, the noisy and crowded streets and the inconvenience of losing electricity, the Moses family was excited to serve where God was at work. An understanding of God’s sovereignty gave them peace raising their family in the Philippines and facing the uncertainties that life brings.
In March 2004 life for the Moses family changed abruptly with the news that a suspicious looking mole removed from Jan’s arm was malignant melanoma. Jan knew this was no surprise to God, Mark recalled, and God’s Word gave her a sense of calm as she clung to verses like Psalm 31:15: “My times are in your hands.”
While Jan traveled to Houston where she underwent tests, scans and surgery, the challenges faced by the Moses family intensified. A CT scan revealed a large tumor on Mark’s left kidney and he, too, was diagnosed with cancer. Because the tumor would need to be surgically removed in the States the rest of the Moses family in one week’s time had to pack, say goodbye to friends and leave their ministry in the Philippines not knowing when or if they would return.
As Mark and Jan recovered from surgery, each faced the reality that their cancer could return. In late October, after Mark and Jan’s scans revealed no evidence of cancer, the family was excited to receive the news that they were cleared to return to the Philippines. By December of 2004 the family was together again settling into their ministry in Iloilo. Mark continued work on a project he began in December 2001 developing simple and reproducible discipleship and evangelism training materials in the local Ilonggo dialect. The day after this project was completed in May 2005, Mark and Jan received the news from a recent CT scan that Jan’s cancer had returned.
Over the next 18 months, upon their return to the U.S., Jan’s health reflected moments of improvement and decline until she died on Feb. 8, 2007. In the eulogy Mark gave at Jan’s memorial service, he said, “It didn’t take me long to realize that she could’ve been almost anything … but she chose to answer God’s call to be a missionary.”
In the years that followed, Mark returned as a church planter in the Philippines from March 2008 to August 2012 with Hannah, Martha and Jonathan while the other two children completed college.
Currently on furlough in Grand Prairie, Mark is surrounded by all five children. David works as a computer programmer at Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth. Sara designs Niemen Marcus catalogs. In the fall, Hannah will begin a master’s program in public history at James Madison University in Virginia after working in the operations department at the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Martha begins her third year of nursing school at Liberty University with a plan to pursue medical missions upon graduation. Jonathan, also with an interest in computers, will begin his first semester at Dallas County Community College.
And in September, Mark will return to the Philippines in a new capacity as an empty nester.
Mark Moses thoughtfully shares the story of his family’s journey of facing cancer as they entrusted their lives to God in his book “An Uncommon Faith.” Jan’s heart is revealed in the book through her journal entries, prayer updates and even the words she wrote to each child talking through the stages of the grieving process from a biblical perspective.
Not only does Moses’ book serve as a loving tribute to the life of Jan Moses but it also serves as encouragement to those facing cancer or the loss of a loved one and those desiring to serve God in missions, and also an inspiration for mothers who wish to raise children who love the Lord.
