Global Ministries

Whitney Peters is a mission intern with the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church, initially serving in the areas of communications and volunteer coordination with Acción Médica Cristiana in Nicaragua.

Mission interns serve half of their three-year terms in international assignments and half in their home countries. Whitney was commissioned in August 2012. Young adult mission service through Global Ministries expands participants’ mission vision and offers faith contexts for the use of skills.

Acción Médica Cristiana engages in community health and development among the impoverished of Nicaragua, with an emphasis on women, children, and adolescents. It encourages communities to implement their own health and development models. It has a multidisciplinary staff committed to health services as a fundamental right, even in isolated, economically marginal regions. Nicaragua, with 5.4 million people, is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Whitney both assists in telling the Acción story within Nicaragua and beyond, and helps to organize the itineraries of volunteer teams who come, mostly from the United States, to work with the ministry during the year.

Whitney is from McKinney, Texas, where she is a member of the First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Her undergraduate degree from Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, is in education. She has work experience as a substitute teacher and interim youth minister.

Her faith journey has been strongly influenced by Chapter 13, Verse 14 of the Gospel of John: “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

“Ever since I first read this scripture, it has constantly resonated with my faith life,” she says. For me, the scripture calls me to apply my experience and my faith life to my future. Jesus is straightforward. He calls us to do as he did, follow his life.”

Whitney grew up in the church and it was at church camp that she felt a strong sense of the presence of God and a voice saying, “help others.” To her, that was a call to ministry, a sense that is strong today, notably in relation to persons whose cultures differ from hers. “I feel that an important aspect to the Christian faith comes in interacting with, sharing with people who are different from me.”