FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 24, 2005

MUW professor and husband enjoy foreign mission trips

By Jill D. O’Bryant
 
COLUMBUS, Miss. -- Suzanne Bennett, a professor at Mississippi University for Women, and her husband Sherrill regularly give of their time, talents and resources to help others through foreign mission work.
   
They spent four weeks this past summer teaching students at the World English Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. They also traveled three hours north to Kampong Cham Province where she taught a four-day seminar on orthopedic nursing to 26 nurses at the general hospital.
   
In addition, they spent one weekend in Siem Reap, Cambodia, visiting the ancient religious temples including Angkor Watt, one of the Wonders of the World and the world’s largest religious shrine. They also spent one weekend visiting in Siagon, Vietnam.
   
The couple began making these trips in association with Partners in Progress world missions out of Little Rock in 1987 after answering an ad in a religious publication for health care workers and preachers needed to conduct the first medical mission trip to Guyana, South America.
   
They fit the description perfectly. At MUW for 24 years, she is an assistant professor of nursing in the associate degree program, and he is a preacher, an elementary school counselor and a licensed social worker.
   
“We discussed doing medical missions with the church of Christ even before we were married over 40 years ago,” Bennett said. “We had to wait till our three sons were old enough before we began these mission trips.”
   
She said it means a lot to her and her husband to be able to help others in this way.
   
“We both love to share the gospel with others,” she said. “First we try to treat their physical illnesses and then we treat their spiritual needs.”
   
They also enjoy the trips because they like to travel. Their previous mission trips have been to Guyana, Surinam, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania and Burkina Fosa, West Africa.
   
The Bennetts, who are expected to pay their own expenses, plan to take a six-week mission trip to Aruba next summer while the local missionary and his family return to the United States for a visit with their family and supporting congregations.
   
This trip will be special for Suzanne since she spent 12 years growing up on the island of Aruba where her parents helped to establish a congregation of the church of Christ.