Johnston Now Honors: Volunteer Service Award winners change lives globally, locally

By Jamie Strickland

Life as a missionary is not easy, but it’s the path that Eugene and Glenda Worley were called to, and they accepted that calling with open hearts and minds.

The couple traveled around the world to spread the word of God and help those in need in places like Ethiopia, Norway, England and the Sudan border for more than 50 years.

It’s for their unwavering willingness to serve, wherever and whenever they were called, that they were chosen as this year’s Johnston Now Honors Exemplary Volunteer Service Award winners.

Raised on a farm in Princeton, at the age of 15, Eugene met his future wife, Glenda, at a youth rally at her church, First Freewill Baptist in Smithfield.

They both attended Baptist Bible College in Springfield Missouri, were married in 1962 and had a son, Ron, in 1964.

Early in his career, Eugene served as an associate pastor at churches in Princeton and Sanford, before volunteering to go to Ethiopia as a missionary with The Baptist Bible Fellowship.

“When we arrived in Ethiopia in 1968, it was right in the middle of the rainy season and mud puddles were everywhere.

Everywhere you walked you’d get mud all over you,” Glenda said. “Our mission had an apartment building that missionaries could stay in until they found a house. When we went to take a bath, the towels were mildewed and they smelled horrible. We laid down to take a nap because we’d been traveling for many many hours, and the windows were open and all the sounds of the street, people with chickens on their back…it was just overwhelming. I remember he turned to me and said, ‘If I didn’t know that God had called us here, we’d be on the next plane going home.’ But I think that’s the main thing, if you know that God has called you…you can deal with anything.”

During their time there, their mission helped start a school for the deaf, which is still going today.

“We had learned sign language before we left, not realizing how involved we might get,” Eugene said.

Glenda’s time was mostly spent teaching sign language and helping break the cultural stigma against people with disabilities.

“The Ethiopians were ashamed if they had a handicapped child, and there were many, many special needs children,” she said. “And so we would have to go out and search for them, because the family would hide them. It was really ground level work.”

After two and a half years, the communist revolution taking place in Ethiopia caused their mission to flee, and they returned to the United States, where they adopted their daughter, Kate.

The adoption process was not without its complications.

“We wanted to adopt, and we checked with adoption agencies, and they all said ‘you’re unstable,’ because we were missionaries,” Eugene said. The couple used a pastor friend’s home in Fayetteville as a home base, and after a year, they were able to adopt through social services.

“She was seven weeks old, and that would have been in February,” Eugene said. “In May, we boarded a ship to Norway. She kind of grew up there for the first four years. It was interesting watching her learn English, but also learning Norwegian.”

After four years, during what was supposed to be a brief visit back home, Eugene was in a farm accident and broke his femur. After recovering, he pastored at a church in Ohio before heading to England, where they spent the next 14 years ministering.

When Ethiopia was stabilized after the revolution, it opened its borders up to missionaries again, and the Worleys returned in 1998.

“Living there is very difficult, because of the poverty, the unstableness of the country.

But I think Africa and Ethiopia just get into your heart,” Glenda said. “The great need was just unreal.”

Eugene served as the director of a Bible college there, and Glenda helped start church Sunday schools by training teachers.

“It is a challenge (living in Ethiopia) but we look back and we don’t think of the negative things, you think of the positive things,” Eugene said. “One of the highlights that I look back on in our lives, in 1994, we were in a meeting with pastors from all over the world, and this man got up to speak, and he told a story of how my testimony was what God used to bring him to Christ, and he asked me to stand, and it was just a very humbling thing. I have since been convinced that often the things that maybe have the most lasting impact are things that you’re not even really aware of.”

In 2006, a serious heart condition caused Glenda to have to return to the United States. While they miss their work overseas, the Worleys have been active in local churches and continue to serve the Johnston County community in a variety of ways, from pastoring to volunteering to substitute teaching in local schools.

To hear more of their story, you can listen to Eugene’s podcast, “To The Regions Beyond,” on Spotify. Or, read the book he authored titled, “Against the Odds,” about his parents, Herman and Catherine Worley, and life on his family’s farm in Princeton during the Great Depression. They may not be traveling the world any more, but the Worleys are still making a difference in the lives of others.

Thank you to No Place Like Home Senior Services for sponsoring this award.