David and Marilyn Shaferly

Dave Shaferly first visited Haiti with the One Mission Society NOW Corps in 1966. Already sensing God’s call to missions, he responded to the field’s request to remain. There he met his wife, Marilyn, who had served in Haiti since 1963. They were married in Haiti in January of 1971.

A graduate of Kentucky Mountain Bible Institute (now Kentucky Mountain Bible College) and Marion College (now Indiana Wesleyan University), with training in electronics from Purdue University, Dave served for several years as an instructor and director at the OMS-related Emmaus Bible College (now Emmaus University) and directed an agricultural co-op. From 1978 to 2005, Dave coordinated all construction for the Mission in Haiti and directed Men for Missions work teams that built churches, parsonages, schools, and other needed buildings. In 1994, Dave was appointed field director for OMS Haiti, a responsibility he filled for 14 years.

Marilyn, a graduate of Azusa Pacific University, worked as a secretary at OMS headquarters in California for two years before answering God’s call to work with Radio 4VEH, a ministry of OMS in Haiti. She went to Haiti in 1963. In addition to office work and programming at 4VEH, she taught in Emmaus Vocational Bible Institute (now Emmaus University) and worked with a local Haitian church, where she and Dave were married in 1971. Marilyn served as manager of Radio 4VEH from 1997 to 2005.

Dave and Marilyn’s sons, Michael and John, grew up in Haiti. During their high school years, the Shaferlys served as hosts for Villa Ormiso, the OMS hospitality center in Port-au-Prince, and as house parents for four to six high school boys, including several Haitians who had graduated from OMS’ Cowman School (now called Cap-Haitian Christian School) in Cap-Haitien.  Michael, his wife, Sarah and daughter reside in Ohio; their son is married, preparing for youth and pastoral work at Indiana Wesleyan University. John met his wife, Jill, while on a Men for Missions work trip to Haiti, where Jill was teaching school. They now reside in South Carolina. They have ten children, six still at home.

Of their 40+ years of service in Haiti, with its fragile political, economic and social conditions, Dave and Marilyn say, “God is at work in this country, in spite of the difficulties. We see growth in spiritual maturity, an increase in stable family relationships, breaks in the suffocating darkness of voodoo and superstition. We confidently leave the ministry to our younger Haitian and missionary colleagues.”

Dave and Marilyn retired from active missionary service in 2007. After building their home, they settled in Ohio.