About Us

Bula Vinaka! We are a family of 5; Roy, Rachael, Josh, Gabrielle and Caleb… though if you ask Caleb, that is his 'old name' and he is actually Kelepi. I guess when you go to Fiji 3 times in the first 3 years of your life, some things stick.

We have been Full Time Volunteers with MMM since June 2020. In this time we have been based at the MMM Centre in Pirongia, but  also spent a lot of time travelling to jobs outside of the Waikato. We have travelled from Northland to Southland and many places in between to lead MMM teams at churches, Christian Camps and other ministries.

When asked where we are from, the answer doesn’t come easily… and it’s more a question of where do we start or how far do we go back…

Roy grew up in Paeroa in the Waikato, Rachael grew up in Lower Hutt in Wellington. We originally met at El Rancho in Waikanae when doing a 2 year cadetship in Christian Camping. Here we learnt the basics of all areas of camp after Christian camping had played an important part in both our childhoods and teen years. At the end of Roy’s time at El Rancho, he felt like God was calling him to be a builder so that he could use those skills to serve him.

In 2005 we got married and only a few months later headed to Totara Springs Christian Centre in Matamata back in the Waikato. Rachael initially worked as an instructor host and then changed to the Ministry team where she became the Kids Camp and Discipleship Coordinator. Roy was lucky enough to end up in a camp with several supportive builders who were able to help him through his apprenticeship. Sometimes he worked at camp, otherwise he would go off site with a local builder when there were no building jobs at camp.

While working at Totara Springs, we were invited by one of those builders on a short term MMM team heading to Savusavu, Fiji to help build a mission guest house. We were billeted out with a Fijian family and enjoyed getting to know the culture, language and people so much that we returned 6 months later. Over the next few years we made a few more trips to Fiji, to both help and visit friends. 

After leaving Totara Springs, we spent a couple of years in Lower Hutt, then a few years living in Nelson and working at Teapot Valley Christian Camp before settling back in Waikanae. Now having  kids, we placed ‘building in Fiji’ in the too-hard basket. 

The week before Caleb was born in 2016, Cyclone Winston hit Fiji leaving much of the country devastated. Straight away our hearts were for the people of Fiji, especially our friends. We knew houses in their village had been completely destroyed with many others being damaged. God continued to stir our hearts and open doors. When Caleb was 3 months old we ended up in Fiji for 10 days helping rebuild a village hall that had been badly damaged. 

Returning from this trip we were asked by our church if we would help take a team to Fiji. This ended in us 18 months later taking a team of 20 to Savusavu. This was a big learning curve of what it looks like to manage a team in Fiji and it was a challenge, but we still felt God calling us for more. 

Although we had been doing these more recent trips to help friends and their village, MMM was always on our radar. We knew there was a Fiji Coordinators job and had talked about it being fun to do a longer stint in Fiji one day when we didn’t have preschoolers. 

In 2019 after spending a month in Fiji as a family, and having seen this role continually advertised, we knew that this was what God was calling us too. On our last night in Savusavu of that trip, one of our good friends said to us, “You have done enough to help our family and village, it’s time to help the rest of Fiji”. So we came home and the next day started the MMM application process which has led us to where we are today - serving full time with MMM Fiji. 

See what we are up to on the MMM Fiji website:

https://www.mmmfiji.org/