Legacy Partners are individuals or families who have dedicated their lives to missions or ministry in some way, and typically rely on funding from the body of Christ to live out the call God has placed on their lives. These partners are both local and international, some have partnered with Central for decades and some have joined the mission field within the last year. Many of these individuals or their families are members of our own congregation.
Our Legacy Partners would love an opportunity to get you involved in their ministry! Check out the links in each partner’s description for more details on how to partner with them in prayer, finances, and their work in the Kingdom.
Having been in education for over twenty years, Mandy Budig is passionate about students and coaches. Having been impacted personally by FCA on Augutana’s campus over 20 years ago, she is excited to now have the opportunity to join the FCA staff. She has witnessed how our youth are under attack and she is honored to support middle school students, high school students, and staff as they seek to strengthen their walk in the Lord. Mandy will be serving the schools in southeastern South Dakota. She will be helping to start and support huddles on middle school and high school campuses, bringing the Word of God to the students and coaches right on their campus. Larry and Mary Caldwell are missionaries with Converge. They lived in Asia off and on across three decades, with their last 21 years in Manila, Philippines. There, Larry was a Professor and Academic Dean at Asian Theological Seminary, while Mary taught ESL to the children of missionaries at Faith Academy. In 2011 they returned to the USA. Larry became the Director of Training and Strategy for Converge International Missions, as well as Chief Academic Officer and Dean, and Professor of Intercultural Studies and Bible Interpretation, at Sioux Falls Seminary. Mary became a Missionary Assessment Advisor for Converge, as well as an ESL teacher to refugees and immigrants in partnership with Lutheran Social Services and the Center for New Americans. Lucy serves on staff with the Salt Company at Iowa State University as a Ministry Leader. Salt Company is a college ministry that seeks to entrust the gospel to the next generation by reaching college campuses. Lucy’s role in Ames is to care for and disciple student leaders and meet with students at ISU with the aim that they would not only have a great four-year college experience, but would follow Jesus all the days of their lives after college as a faithful presence and fruitful witness. Learn more about Salt Company and Salt Company’s work in Ames. Heather Carr works with Cru. She has been with this ministry for 28 years working on college campuses in the US and in East Asia with the desire to see college students have a chance to know someone who truly follows Jesus. Her current position is the Mission Director helping give leadership to our college ministries in the midwest. They are called “Cru Heartland” which includes 10 teams across 6 states- North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Each team consists of anywhere from 4-20 staff and all of our teams are reaching out to at least 4 schools with our metro teams reaching up to 30. She comes alongside the team leaders to coach them as they lead their teams to grow closer to the Lord and in the mission where God has called them to go. Dave serves as the International Director of Asia, with Converge, while being located in Minnesota with his wife Carol. They are working to bring about a gospel-movement among the least-reached peoples of Asia, laying strong foundations for global workers, building bridges with national partners, and opening doors to new areas of work. Their vision statement for all their workers worldwide is asking God for a gospel movement among every least-reached people group in our generation. Shayla serves as an Architect and missionary with Engineering Ministries International (EMI) in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. EMI is a Christian non-profit made up of architects, engineers, surveyors, and construction managers who value Design, Discipleship, and Diversity. EMI’s worldwide mission is to develop people, design structures, and construct facilities which serve communities and the Church—facilities like hospitals, schools, water systems, and more. Since joining staff in 2020, Shayla has had the privilege of serving ministries such as CURE Children’s Hospital of Zimbabwe with a master plan and clean water system, Bongolo Hospital in Gabon with a design for a Maternity Center, and Church of the Holy Spirit in South Africa with the construction of a new Community Center. Shayla started her journey in ministry during a Central Church Youth Group mission trip to Haiti in 2012. God used this experience in a developing country recovering from a major earthquake to reveal to Shayla the transformative power of architecture, and His desire to use her talents to build His Kingdom and restore the world through design. Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) is on the campus of Augustana University, where Lindsey serves as a full time staff person. She works to develop relationships with coaches and athletes to help them know Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. She establishes ministry on campus through relationships, groups, and events, so that every ear can hear the name of Jesus. On a regular basis, she disciples students/coaches, leads bible studies, feeds coaches and athletes, attends practices and serves as a team chaplain. Greg is the Director of Grace Incarcerated ministries with Converge Heartlands. He works in the Minnehaha county jail and is also the Pastor of Prison Lighthouse Fellowship. Over the last 10 years, Tom Henderson, founder of Restoration Generation, has spoken to over 250,000 people across the country at conferences, festivals, schools and other events with one mission in mind: Restoring generations of relationships – with God and with each other. In Sioux Falls, Restoration Generation hosts the annual RESGEN Men’s Summit which encourages and equips over 1000 men to pursue Christ, lead their families and live out their faith in the workplace. RESGEN also hosts 2 Date Night Comedy marriage events each year, a parenting conference and monthly youth leader luncheons that unites youth workers around the common mission of reaching teens and families for Christ. Jason Hopkins is one of very few Sign Language Bible Translation Consultants worldwide. His passion is to help sign language translators create translations that communicate God’s Word clearly, accurately and naturally in the various sign languages, giving the Deaf the opportunity to see the Bible in their own language. The Hopkins currently work with a team of Deaf Ghanaians to translate the Bible into their sign language. The goal is to produce scriptures that will be used by the Deaf in Ghana for their spiritual growth. Jason’s main roles are exegete and team mentor. Exegeting scriptures for translation requires a wide range of skills that are developed over time with a significant amount of training. A major goal is to help train the team to do as much as possible on their own so they can reach independence. The more skills and abilities they have the more ownership the Deaf community has over the translation work. While doing the exegesis for the project, Jason is also training the team to take over exegesis. If you’d like to get their newsletters or information about how to support them financially check out this website: Justin and Danielle work for the Jesus Film Ministry to help bring the gospel to people in their heart language. There are 6,500 languages in the world yet the Bible says that every tribe, tongue, and nation will hear the good news… How is this possible? Their goal is to help translate the gospel of Luke, and dub it into the Jesus Film, so that no one has to learn a new language in order to hear about Jesus. It’s illegal to be a Christian in the countries that they work in, so for security reasons, please reach out to Central’s staff to contact this couple. Desi has served with Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) for over 10 years now. Cru is about helping every student on campus come to know Christ, be built up in their faith, and then sent out to teach the world with the good news of the Gospel. Desi lives that out in two ways- first by serving on the 7 campuses the local SD team works on- SDSU, USD, DSU, LATI, NSU, MTI, & WIT. While there, she leads a bible study of women, disciples students one on one, and shares the Gospel on campus. Desi is also the program director of a Cru Winter Conference that hosts close to 1000 students every winter in Minneapolis MN. Harlan’s Prison Ministry started in 2007 where he began raising his own funding for his evangelism mission. As a prison chaplain, he has the privilege of sharing the Gospel with the inmates. His mission is to lead men to Christ. He lives this out by leading counseling sessions and bible studies with the men in Sioux Falls’ local prison. He pours his heart out to these men as he disciples them to live out their lives as faithful men of Christ. Luke and Jen are currently serving college students with Cru Campus Ministry in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Peter and Laurel Olson have served at Black Forest Academy (BFA) since 2006. BFA, located in Kandern, Germany, is a school for students in grades 5-12. Peter teaches high school math, physics and computer science and chairs the math department at BFA while Laurel runs the admissions office. BFA’s core purpose is to help missionary families continue in the work God has given them by providing for the educational needs of their children. In Grades 9-12, students are able to participate in BFA’s boarding program. Families of BFA students live and serve in over 50 different countries throughout Western & Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Tim and Sheila Steele serve as a Divisional Manager and Operations for Live Events for FamilyLife, a division of the interdenominational, parachurch Cru, which focuses on marriage, parental ministry. The mission of this ministry is to equip and develop Godly marriages and families to change the world. Beyond this ministry, Tim and Sheila mentor and disciple married couples and lead other FamilyLife events. The Waddell’s serve through YWAM on the island of Kona. Jeff is teaching people in developing nations how to get safe drinking water using simple and affordable approaches. Melissa is providing healthcare education both for staff, students, and those in developing nations.