The first thing to address is Peter Francis’ name/s. The short story is that he remains known by his first name, Peter, by those in the UK, but in the rest of the world he has become known by his middle name, Francis. He prefers you refer to him accordingly based on where you know him from.

Background

He was born in Ashford, Kent in the South East of England, attended Godinton Primary School and the Norton Knatchbull Grammar School for Boys and Sixth Form, and was a part of Ashford Baptist Church.

Following school he spent three years volunteering with Youth For Christ around England including Leicestershire, Buckinghamshire, the Wirral, and more, which involved working alongside churches such as Holy Trinity Ashby.

He then attended University in Portsmouth, studying Psychology and getting involved with a great many areas of student life. Most notably he was involved with the work of the Christian Union and the student life at the King’s Church.

Following on from this he took part in an 11-month, 11-country mission trip called the World Race, coming to be known as Francis by all of those he worked alongside around the world and it was during this time that he met Andrea.

He went on to train as a Teacher before getting married to Andrea and transitioning to full time work as an overseas missionary. From 2014 to 2019 they were part of Youth With A Mission (YWAM) in both Malaysia & Guatemala, then from 2020 they have been serving as local missionaries in Puerto Barrios and he has been helping train missionaries globally.

Work Areas

During his time on the mission field he has been involved in both front line and support roles.

Front line work has included working with the homeless, teaching English, children’s ministry, care home visits, campus ministry, Bible distribution, and more. When needed he is happy to serve as a translator for a visiting team or individual, to enable them to cross the linguistic barrier and interact with the local people.

During his time with YWAM, he found that he had a gifting and passion for working on administrative tasks and other behind-the-scenes jobs, allowing others with more front-line vision to be able to more fully focus on those works. He has been involved in accounting, website management, documentation, logistics, communications and more.

He is motivated to serve the missionaries he works with in these ways, but also in directly intentional ways by considering the care that missionaries receive. One area he enjoys serving in is in worship leading through singing and playing the guitar – in one or two languages.

During the pandemic God birthed a vision in him to serve missionaries by training them specifically in the area of developing their own ministry partnership teams. This has now become his main focus and passion.

Hobbies

He enjoys a number of things in his free time.

Whilst he has grown in leading worship over the last few years and enjoys playing the guitar & singing, he has also been slowly learning to play the drums. With some interest in languages he continues to work on his Spanish and started learning French as a pandemic hobby as well.

He enjoys watching movies, especially Marvel movies, and has a few bits of TV he follows, particularly DC shows (is there a theme there?). If he can find the time he enjoys a little bit of video games, though nothing current – just replaying through old favourites – and can find himself down a black hole of smartphone use if left unchecked (can’t we all?!).

He values spending time accessing personal growth resources – books, videos, podcasts, etc. – to inspire and challenge him to develop further as a disciple, a man, a husband, a father, & a leader.

One of his favourite things to do though is to go out on dates or have some board game time with Andrea, or take one of the kids out for ice cream or to a play area, or to go out as a family to do something fun.

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