Mark Rutland - Missions Work

Missions Work

After his experience in 1975, Rutland began preaching revivals and conferences in a number of churches and it was during this period that he believes God began calling him to the mission field. His first mission was to the country of Mexico in 1977 where he worked with American missionary couple Jim and Helen Mann in the village of Laborcitas (Rutland, 1987 p. 51-53) While Rutland undertook many other missions to Mexico, his foray into missions did not begin in earnest until 1979 when, after he believed he had received a revelation that God would be sending him all over the world to carry out missions, he traveled to the country of Ghana (Rutland, 1987 p. 77) Initially, Rutland was forced to wait in London, England, for several days as the airport in Accra, Ghana, was closed as a result of an attempted coup on May 15, 1979, by forces loyal to future leader of Ghana, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings.

Rutland's mission to Ghana in 1979 consisted of a 28-day crusade in which he preached in many places and churches throughout the country, including the cities of Accra and Kumasi. In Kumasi, he worked a great deal with a man named Brew Riverson, the President of the small Methodist training college in the city Wesley College and whom he had become acquainted with several years before at a rally he had held in Atlanta, Georgia.

In the following years, Rutland carried out many other evangelistic missions to many countries, including Ghana; among the many places where Rutland undertook missions in the subsequent years were Nigeria, India, Benin, Colombia, Peru, Thailand, and Mexico among others (Rutland, 1987). It was also during this time that he founded the Trinity Foundation, later renamed Global Servants. Originally intended to be an evangelistic organization operating within the United States, Global Servants became an evangelistic missions association that has carried out operations all over the world from the founding of bible training schools in many different countries to the founding of the House of Grace in Chiang Rai City, Thailand, in 1988. The House of Grace was started as a place of refuge for young ethnic Akha girls at risk of becoming ensnared in the lucrative Southeast Asian sex slave trade.