Wahlstrom, Brent & Wanda

introducing our missionaries...

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The Wahlstroms live and serve in Prince Albert, SK, primarily with Tribal Trails TV ministry, but also assist with Pine Ridge Bible Camp.

Missionary life began very early for Wanda Wahlstrom. She was born while her parents, Joe and Helen Pope, were NCEMers stationed at Gods Lake, in remote northern Manitoba. At age two her family moved to serve in Cumberland House (SK), which Wanda recalls as “the best part of my childhood,” mentioning that she still has friends there.

In her teen years the Popes served in central Alberta. While Wanda thinks fondly of her youth group and church in Ponoka, life and ministry for her family on a nearby Reserve was not easy.

After high school she was off to Bible college, thinking it was probably expected of her as an “MK” to also become a missionary. However, she spent most of her three years there feeling, “That’s not what I want to be.”

Wanda did want to serve the Lord. It was just that she’d seen more than enough problems and pain — like teenage school friends dying from suicide and murder. But at a missions conference in her final year of college she said “yes” to God. NCEM seemed the natural choice and in 1980 she began short-term assignments in Yukon, northern BC, as well as at NCEM’s Tribal Trails office in Prince Albert.

And P.A. is where she met Brent, who’d grown up in a Christian home on a southeastern Saskatchewan farm. He, too, had given his heart to Christ at a young age. Exposure to missions came through visits from missionaries to his church and home. He rededicated his life to Christ as a teen and attended Bible college, following which he trained in architectural drafting.

With a heart for missions, particularly technical service, he had contacted an organization which specialized in linking missions with potential workers. To this day he has not heard back from them!

“So I dropped the missions idea and got a job in Prince Albert,” says Brent. He met Wanda at a singles Bible study. Though they’d been at Briercrest College together, they’d never spoken to each other (Wanda says she has no recollection of even seeing him there!).

“In P.A. I got to know Wanda and the Mission at the same time,” says Brent. He joined NCEM in early 1985, they were married in April, and by fall were serving in Cormorant (MB). Deschambault Lake (SK) followed and, in 1987, they moved to serve at Tribal Trails.

Brent notes that he hasn’t been able to use his drafting skills much. Instead, he has noticed himself and fellow missionaries often called to work in areas for which they’re not specifically trained. “But the Lord seems to equip,” says Brent, “and it has been enjoyable serving Him in new and unexpected ways.”