Past Pioneer: Ernie Steury

THE CALL: 2024-2025   |   1 MINUTE READ

Being a missionary requires a certain kind of attitude. It requires that you stand, you look around, you ask for the way to go. And then you take it.

And to be clear, the road missionaries take is an old road. It’s one others have walked down. People like Ernie and Sue Steury.

Arriving in Kenya and beginning language study to learn Kipsigis, the language of the local people.

Bomet, Kenya. May 1959.

Dr. Ernie and Sue Steury and their young daughter arrived in 1959 at a hospital called Tenwek. Few knew of Tenwek at that time. It was a small hospital, and no physician had ever practiced there. But after two decades of faithful prayer by WGM Prayer Bands, the Steurys loaded up, left the comforts of North America and the promise of a healthy salary as a physician in the States, and came to somewhere that, at the time, probably seemed like a step backwards.

For the next 38 years, Dr. Steury served as medical director, executive officer, and, for many of those years, the sole doctor and surgeon at Tenwek Hospital. He also ministered on the field as an evangelist and served in field leadership roles. And during his time at Tenwek, he saw the facility go from less than 50 beds to 240 beds.

Dr. Steury providing care for a young boy in the 1990s.

“Come, follow me.”

This statement isn’t said by a board at a renowned hospital offering six-figure salaries, lucrative benefits, and tuition reimbursement. It’s said by a man who often accompanied His invitations with phrases like, “take up their cross” (Matthew 16:24 NIV) and “The Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).

Not exactly enticing, to say the least.

Here’s what’s amazing: Dr. Ernie and Sue Steury did just that. They followed Jesus from Berne, Indiana, to Bomet, Kenya, and when Dr. Steury left Kenya for the last time, his words were: “It was worth it all.”

And now, missionaries all over the world are standing on the shoulders of the Steurys, following Jesus in the same ways.