WINNER
BILLY MURRAY
CHRISTIAN EDUCATOR OF THE YEAR 2010
(Adult)
PRESENTED TO:
YVONNE L. MITCHELL
BIO
Yvonne L. Mitchell is a native of Samuel Prospect in the Parrish of Trelawney in the Caribbean Island nation of Jamaica. She is the third oldest of nine children born to Edward and Muriel Samuels. Yvonne was nurtured and reared in a very loving and caring home, where both of her parents were devoted Christians. The Samuels instilled in Yvonne and her siblings the power of prayer and the importance of the church. Yvonne was converted at the tender age of 13, and later that same year was sanctified and filled with the Holy Ghost. From a small child, she was actively involved in her home church, taking part in the Sunday School, Youth Ministry, and choir.
She received her early education in Jamaica, and continued her studies after migrating to the United Kingdom in 1965, where she pursued the field of nursing. In 1971 Yvonne migrated to Boston, Mass., where she later married, and joined the Warren Street Church of God of Prophecy in the Roxbury Community. Yvonne is the mother of two grown children, Tanya and Richard, and she has five grandchildren. Though life’s unfortunate circumstances left Yvonne a single parent, she has maintained her Christian integrity, and remained a faithful witness and an example of abiding faith through adversity.
Yvonne strives for excellence in both her secular work, but especially her service to the Lord. As a Sunday School teacher, her weekly adult classes reflect much time, effort and prayer that she devotes in preparing to teach each lesson. She is a certified teacher and continues to take advantage of all opportunities to improve her skills as a communicator of the Word of God. She makes every effort to model the fruit of the Spirit before her students, and takes a personal interest in their lives, maintaining regular contact with them outside of the classroom. She seeks to enhance the learning environment by fostering a true spirit of fellowship among her students by organizing annual out-off-town trips to places of interest as well as local venues. The class has enjoyed guided tours of historic places in and around Boston, fall foliage trips to Vermont, the Amish Country, Sight and Sound Theatre, and the civil war battle site at Gettysburg.
In addition to her work in the Sunday School Department, she spends a great deal of her personal time as the Coordinator of the Community Outreach Ministry, a department that distributes food and other personal items to the Roxbury and surrounding communities. She leads this ministry in feeding approximately 300 persons per month, and uses her personal resources to ensure that shut-ins and the elderly are properly served. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards from the United Way of Mass. Bay, the Boston Mayor’s Office, and has been featured on local media. Yvonne also serves as an usher, Small Group Leader, is actively involved in Women’s Ministry, and is an ardent supporter of the Youth and Children’s Departments. For two summers she successfully spearheaded the effort to secure a grant to fund a summer- long camp program at the church. Through this effort, the local church was blessed with sufficient financial support to purchase needed audio/visual equipment that has been a blessing to other ministries.
Yvonne is active in charitable activities outside of the local church. With the support from local physicians, fellow health care workers, and the Jamaican community in Boston, she supports the Trelawney Branch of the Diabetes Association of Jamaica and the Falmouth Hospital there.
One wonders how Yvonne finds the time to do all of these activities while also holding down a full-time job as a Surgical Technologist in the OB-GYN department at one of Boston’s busiest hospitals. Defying better judgment by those who love her, she sleeps only four hours per night and is driven by an undaunting desire to serve the Lord by serving others, bringing souls to His Kingdom and glory to His name. She is a truly remarkable woman and a shining example of a life that is devoted and surrendered to Christ.