Seniors Makensie, Hannah and Bethany Cobb are triplets with one united goal — to spread the Gospel to the nations. They are all currently studying to become nurses with an emphasis in missions.
This summer, Makensie spent 12 weeks in an undisclosed part of North Africa, Hannah spent nine weeks in Greece, and Bethany spent six weeks in Papau New Guinea.
In North Africa, Makensie worked with an unengaged people group comprised of mostly Muslim backgrounds. She said that she worked in the 10/40 window, which is the latitude and longitude at the top of North Africa, the Middle East and the bottom of Asia.
“It’s a highly concentrated area of people that have either not heard [the Gospel] or Muslims — just non-Christians,” Makensie said. “I had not interacted with Muslim people much, and I wanted that experience.”
Makensie traveled to North Africa through an organization called Cafe 1040.
“Cafe 1040 provided me with ways that I could get practical application in missions,” Makensie said. “Interacting with people, being in their culture and seeing how they live was important to know how to spread the Gospel effectively in such a secure area.”
Makensie could only communicate through email, talking in code to ensure the safety of her team and the people she was discipling. She said it was very powerful to see how the Word of God transformed people even under such strict circumstances.
One woman, who Makensie referred to as Sally to maintain anonymity, was curious about Christ and was moved to tears by the Gospel.
“We were sitting and talking with Sally, and she had a lot of hard things going on in her life,” Makensie said. “We mentioned a passage of Scripture that was comforting, and … she just starts crying — she was hearing the Word of God for the first time. It was incredible to see how the living Word of God impacted her, and I pray that it will continue to change her life.”
Hannah spent 11 weeks traveling with Greater Europe Mission, building relationships with the local people and partnering with churches in Athens, Greece.
“Most of my time in Greece was about developing relationships and walking alongside new believers in discipleship,” Hannah said. “I have felt called to minister to people from Muslim backgrounds, specifically the Middle East, and God opened a door for me to do that this summer.”
One week, Hannah travelled to the island of Lesvos, one of the most heavily populated arrival points for refugees, and saw the effects of the international refugee crisis firsthand.
“We got to see the refugee camp and the shoreline where the boats come in daily on the northeastern side,” Hannah said. “Right now there are over 10,000 refugees at this camp; the camp can’t compensate for the number of people that are being held there, so the conditions were rough.”
For Hannah, the freedom that Christianity offers was key to spreading the Gospel to her Muslim friends in both Athens and Lesvos.
“We got to share with refugees and believers and remind them that while the religion that they might have grown up in was oppressive, as believers in Christ, there’s freedom,” Hannah said. “It’s incredible to see how much God’s grace impacts these refugees, bringing them from a place of such oppression and war to a place where they are surrounded by Christians.”
Meanwhile, Bethany trained with missionaries in Papua New Guinea for six weeks. She traveled with an organization called Ethnos360, which focuses on discipleship training.
“I hope to be a missionary one day to an unreached people group, and Ethnos360 teaches people how to do that,” Bethany said. “I wanted to learn what it was like — in the good and hard times — and this summer, I got a very realistic perspective.”
One week, Bethany said they lived among a tribe, accompanied by missionaries who had been adopted into the tribe after living there for 15 years.
“One of the biggest struggles that tribal people face comes when they see outsiders or wealthy people,” Bethany said. “They see all that the outsiders have and want to appease the ‘god’ they believe in just to acquire material things. They wanted God, but didn’t truly know him.”
Bethany and her team worked to break through their worldview and got to witness transformation as they grew to know who God really is.
“We got to sit in on a teaching of the first chapters of Acts, and a few days before, the people had just heard the Gospel story,” Bethany said. “It was so cool to see that seed being planted and say, ‘OK, there’s a lot of people here whose eyes are being opened and who are excited to learn more about the Word of the Lord.’”
This summer, each of the Cobb triplets faithfully trusted the Lord and went to different overseas locations in order to spread the Gospel.
“What’s really cool is everyone has been called to make disciples of all nations,” Bethany said. “That’s just really exciting to me.”
Now that they are back home, they said that goal remains the same.
“We are all called to spread the Gospel … whether that’s overseas or stateside,” Makensie said.
