An Act of Faith
Randy and Linda Spacht’s journey to serving God in Colombia and beyond
Randy Spacht, born into a Christian home and raised by a pastoral family, always responded positively to OMS missionaries who visited and spoke at his home church. Twice each year, he attended OMS’ missions conventions and continually felt a call to commit his life to missions.
“By the time I was graduating from high school, I felt a very strong sense that God wanted me on the mission field,” Randy said. “So I began to prepare for that.”
Initially, he thought his call was to be a missionary kid (MK) school teacher in mathematics in Latin America, but Randy quickly realized God wanted him in Japan first with OMS’ Novice Overseas Witness Corp or NOW Corp.
Margaret Brabon, a former OMS missionary in Colombia and, at the time, director of the OMS Student Center at Asbury College where both Randy and his girlfriend were, encouraged their callings to the mission field.
“She told my wife-to-be, Linda, ‘God first calls you to a person, then he works out the place,’” he said. “We felt that God was calling us to each other, and ended up applying to OMS for Colombia.”
Randy and Linda worked with the youth of Colombia for eight months until the program was nationalized, and then God opened the doors to allow them to teach at the local seminary, the Biblical Seminary of Colombia.
“It was there that God really began to show us the gifts that he had given us, and we began to exercise those gifts in the seminary,” said Randy. “We began to see God use us in ways that we never thought possible.”
After this spiritual clarity, Randy and Linda began a season of fruitful ministry, having deep relationships with students and mentoring them into a life of impact, but with fruitful ministry comes spiritual warfare and tests of faith.
While Randy and his family were intermittently back in the United States, guerilla presence became more prominent and threating to missionaries in Colombia. One was even captured by the guerillas as they threatened to murder him after 40 days if all Wycliffe missionaries failed to leave Colombia. The days timed out, and he was killed and his body publicly displayed.
“It was an eye-opening experience and a crisis of faith,” said Randy. “Do we go back to a country where missionaries are paying with their lives?”
Linda reminded him of a time in Colombia where God saved her and their son from a public execution and shooting of a local judge and the surrounding public by nudging her to step into the bank and have a cup of coffee with a friend. She told Randy, “The safest place for us to be is not in the United States. The safest place for us to be is in the center of God’s will.”
After choosing to stay where the Lord called him, Randy later became the field leader in Colombia. After the Spachts returned to the U.S., Randy served as the executive director of International Ministries (now Global Ministries).
Today, Randy team pastors at a local church in Greenwood, Indiana. OMS is grateful to Randy and Linda for their inspirational and faithful work for the kingdom.