1 August 2012
SIM announced today that Dr. Joshua Bogunjoko has been named as next International Director. Dr. Bogunjoko will assume his five-year term on 1 June 2013, and will succeed Malcolm McGregor, SIM’s International Director since 2003. This is a historic appointment as Joshua comes from the ECWA church in Nigeria, a denomination which SIM helped to plant. Please pray with us for the Bogunjoko family.
Joshua and Joanna grew up in families of mixed religious expressions. While Joshua grew up in a family that mixed Christianity with animism, Joanna was born to a Muslim father and a nominal Christian mother, but grew up with her grandmother who was a nominal Christian.
Joshua was active in church from childhood but committed his heart to Christ in his second year of high school. He was privileged to attend one of the mission high schools established by SIM, now run by Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA). It was there that he met the Lord. From this early age he also encountered missions as he was taught by an SIM missionary and several other committed Christian teachers.
Joshua went to the University of Port Harcourt where he read pharmacology (1985) and then medicine, graduating in medicine in 1988. It was in his first year of medical school that he felt the Lord’s call to mission, and it was then he committed his heart to serve the Lord in cross-cultural mission. While attending university, Joshua served in several leadership roles of the evangelical student movement called the Nigerian Fellowship of Evangelical Students (NIFES).
Joshua joined ECWA Evangel Hospital in Jos, Nigeria, in October 1988 as a pre-registration house-officer. He completed a year of national service at the military hospital in Rukuba, Jos, and served as the national president of the evangelical movement of young Christian graduates doing their one year national service, a group of about 3,000 young Christians at the time. He returned to Evangel Hospital, Jos, in 1990 where he did his residency training in Family Medicine with the West African College of Physicians, earning the Fellowship of the College (Fellow of the West African College of Physicians) in 1996.
At Evangel, he developed many valuable mentoring relationships that encouraged his vision for mission. During this time, he continued his involvement in the student movement in NIFES and on the Advisory Board of the ECWA student movement, as well as in the development of a response to HIV/AIDS and training of health workers in villages across Nigeria. In 1992, Joshua did a short mission assignment at the SIM Hospital, Galmi, Niger, at which time he felt the Lord was calling him back there to serve long-term.
Joanna, also a medical doctor, committed her heart to Christ in her third year of medical school at Ogun State University, Ago-Iwoye in Nigeria. She was also blessed with good pastors who discipled her and encouraged her faith. She was active in church, serving as a Sunday School teacher. Joanna joined the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital for her year of internship in 1992. It was during this time, and through contacts with a friend of Joshua’s at the hospital, that the Lord began to work in Joanna’s heart, leading her to consider mission work as a possible direction for her. It was also through this friend that Joshua and Joanna met in May 1993 and were married in November of the same year.
Joshua and Joanna started their ministry at the SIM Hospital, Galmi, in June 1995 as members of Evangelical Missionary Society of ECWA (EMS) and seconded as SIM associates. Joshua They served as medical staff and project managers (Joshua in an HIV/AIDS project and Joanna in a Nutrition Rehabilitation Project). In 1999, at the end of their first term in Niger, they went to Briercrest Biblical Seminary in Canada where Joshua earned a Master of Arts degree in Leadership and Management, and went on to do a year of French studies at Laval University, Québec city. While in Canada, Joshua and Joanna joined as full SIM members through the Canadian office.
On their return to Galmi in June 2002, Joanna returned to medical practice, while Joshua took on the position of Chief Medical Officer and then Director of the hospital. He filled this role until their move to the SIM International Office in 2006 when Joshua became the SIM Deputy International Director for Europe and West Africa. Joanna works in the SIM Archives as Assistant Archivist and also assists the SIM Champion for Children Ministry.
Joshua and Joanna are blessed with two children, Jochebed (17) and Joel (14). Jochebed has just finished high school and will be starting at William’s College in August, while Joel will be starting high school.
Their ministry verse is Psalm 67, particularly verses 1-2, 'May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face shine upon us, that Your ways may be known on earth, Your salvation among all nations.'
