Meet Mark and Marchelle Slone!
Mark and Marchelle are SOS’s newest missionaries! They joined our other 5 families in January 2024. While Mark and Marchelle are new to SOS, they are not novices to ministry. They had been serving the Lord for decades in church and ministry leadership positions. Before answering God’s call to full-time missions, Mark was serving as the Missions Director at their sending church, since 2010.
Mark grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with his earliest memories of being in church. Mark explains, “I cut my teeth on the pews of the church.” He grew up in the Methodist church as an altar boy and frequented the Baptist church with his grandmother. He was an active child. Some even labeled him as a trouble maker. He loved the outdoors, sports, and music. He enjoyed disassembling toys and machines, an early sign of his future career in engineering. The Lord saved Mark in 1975 at the age of 14.
Nearly a decade later, Mark graduated from Tennessee State University with a Mechanical Engineering degree. He landed a job in Virginia, which is where he would meet and marry his wife, Marchelle. Marchelle had grown up in Suffolk, Virginia with a godly mother as her role model. After God saved Marchelle at the age of 10, she began serving in her church. She particularly enjoyed teaching children’s Sunday school and singing in the choir.
Mark and Marchelle met and married within a year and shortly thereafter added a daughter, Markiya and son, Austin to complete their family. Mark began deacon training in his church which led to greater roles of service and teaching. His life was beginning to revolve around the church, which led him to desire further training for ministry. He enrolled in Bible college in 1996 and went on to receive his ThM from Dallas Theological Seminary in 2009, after moving to Texas in 2006. In seminary, he was exposed to missions and caught a heart for the nations. He became the missions director for their church in 2010, enabling he and Marchelle to go on multiple missions trips around the world.
Mark felt called to full-time missions in 2016, but Marchelle didn’t share that same sense of calling. She later recognized that her tight hold on her life in America had been inhibiting her desire to serve the Lord overseas. So Mark patiently waited for the Lord to work in Marchelle’s heart. But in 2019, Marchelle visited Uganda on a short term trip. She taught women and saw the need that Mark had been telling her about. She saw their need for truth and was burdened by their failure to understand salvation by grace, not by works. Marchelle sensed a clear calling to full-time missions during that trip, and in January 2022 they were sent out by World Venture to join West Baptist Theological College Uganda in Kasese, Uganda for Mark to serve as a Bible professor. Mark learned about Shepherds Training College at SOS and visited a couple of times. He is grateful that the experiences serving at WBTCU prepared him for “the next level of serving in missions with greater service and usefulness.” And the Lord brought Mark to serve at Shepherds Training College as the Assistant Dean of Administration and professor. Mark teaches Marriage and Family to the Degree students and Bible Interpretation to the Certificate students.
Since coming to SOS, Mark has enjoyed seeing God’s hand of providential preparation on his life. He shares, “It has been a very rewarding experience allowing me to use all the giftings that God has given me including my engineering and leadership experiences.” His prior experience in the engineering world has enhanced his ability to serve SOS by developing maintenance procedures, creating policies for students for facility use, sharing ideas for areas of improvement and to enhance the Student Life Team. He wants to continue to “take advantage of the opportunities to pour all that God has given me into the lives of the students and serve the other leaders here to help each one of us become the best that God would have us to be.”
Since serving with SOS, Mark appreciates SOS's “passion to equip servant leaders for leading and building up the body of Christ with the purpose of seeing believers living out their Christian faith in all areas of their life. That is, through the seriousness of the training and the level of professionalism in kingdom work.”
Mark and Marchelle are known around here for their love for God and for people as seen in their Texas-size hugs and generous hospitality. Children frequent their home, eager for a listening ear and a sweet treat. Marchelle loves to welcome visitors into her home, and visitors enjoy the benefits of the skills she acquired with her degree in culinary arts! The STC student wives, professors’ wives, and missionary wives are blessed to have Marchelle’s friendship, mentorship, and prayer support. She appreciates feeling that she is “surrounded by family” here at SOS.
Mark’s goal for his nearly 100 students is for them to live out 2 Timothy 2:15 to, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” He wants “to see them become all that God wants them to be in their lives, their families, and ministries for the glory of God.”
Praise God with us for answering our prayers by giving us such an incredible family to serve at SOS. Pray for them as they continue to wholeheartedly use their lives to further the Kingdom!
