Eubanks returning to Vietnam, Cambodia to help children

By Tom Marshall
Senior Advocate writer


A Mt. Sterling couple is moving to Vietnam later this month on a mission trip to help orphans overseas.

Enoch and Marissa Eubank are making the trip as part of Orphans Voice Ministries, an international adoption program that attempts to match parents in the U.S. with children from countries where adoption is difficult. They leave for Vietnam March 15, but will also spend time in neighboring Cambodia.

The Eubanks say God put in their heart to help children there.
“We felt, and God has confirmed for us, a call that we were meant to go there and help with those children,” Marissa said.

This is not the Eubanks first mission trip.
Last year they spent three months in Vietnam and Cambodia working at local orphanages and promoting Christianity in underground churches. Christians are sometimes jailed or suffer discrimination in communist nations.

The Eubanks served on previous foreign missions in Guatemala and Africa. Here in the U.S. they participated in the relief effort in Louisiana after Hurricane Rita.

That first mission to Louisiana inspired them to seek out more ways to help others and the trips abroad only worked to reinforce that, the Eubanks said “I felt I was doing God’s work and I liked that,” Enoch said. “That just kind of started everything. ... The hunger for that just grew. I saw people had a need all over the world.”

Marissa said her desire to be a missionary dates back to elementary school. That’s when a group of missionaries spoke to her class at Mapleton Elementary about their experiences in Africa.
Marissa said she liked the idea of making a difference in the world.

As an adult, Marissa became familiar with Tony Brewer, founder of Orphan’s Voice, while attending church at Mt. Sterling’s Fellowship Christian Assembly. Brewer soon hired her to help parents in the U.S. with the adoption process.

Marissa told Enoch about the calling she felt from God to take things a step further and become an overseas missionary.

Enoch didn’t object and accompanied her on their first mission trip together to Guatemala in 2004. Enoch, who has considered becoming a pastor, said he found the experience rewarding and it planted a seed for further spiritual growth.

“When God brought us together he grew that hunger for (mission work) between us. ...,” Enoch said. “We prayed about it and confirmed it in a number of ways.”

One confirmation of God’s intentions, Enoch said, came during a trip to Lexington before one overseas mission when Marissa was a bit discouraged. About that time a car passed with “Go Now Go” on the license plate, the same message Marissa had felt God telling her.

In Guatemala they worked at an orphanage and handed out food to those in need. They married the next year and participated in another mission, this time to Africa, in 2006.

Last year, in Vietnam and Cambodia, they helped coordinate adoptions with parents in the U.S. Enoch, trained to be a physical education teacher at Morehead State University, also played with children and taught them how to care for themselves.

The Eubanks said many of the children had nothing and lived in squalor until they were taken in at the orphanage.

The orphans often come from broken homes, where the father, the family breadwinner, is dead or unable to work. Some scavenged in local dumps for food and clothing, the Eubanks said.
If they were hurt, the Eubanks said, the children had access to no sort of medical care.

The missionaries bring food, medicine and other supplies to the orphanages. This is critical, the Eubanks stress, because both nations have no system of social services like we have here in the U.S. On their upcoming trip, Marissa says they will spend six months in language training so they can better communicate with people there before continuing with their efforts to spur foreign adoption and spread Christianity.

Enoch said living in Vietnam and Cambodia on a long-term basis will give them the time they need to make a lasting effect.

“We will be able to get settled in somewhere and not just get a foundation started on a building, pass out some clothes and it’s time to go home,” he said. “We started praying that God would show us a specific place (to serve God).”

They say they will receive financial support during their mission from the church they now attend, Jeffersonville Baptist. Donations can be sent to the church at 145 Ky. Hwy. 599, Jeffersonville, Ky. 40337. In the memo portion of the check you should note “Eubanks support.”