Marti Ensign

Marti Ensign is a long-time member of the Renovaré family—formerly serving on the board of directors, and currently serving on the Ministry Team. Over her long, full life in ministry, Marti has served in the past as Director of Women in Medicine and Dentistry for the Christian Medical/Dental Society, and is currently on the board of directors for Mission Aviation Fellowship, the board of governors for Friends in the West (sponsor of the African Children's Choir), and a hostess for international visitors to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.

Few things are more delightful than hearing Marti share stories of her time as a medical missionary in Central Africa (Rwanda and Burundi). We invite you to enjoy her contribution to the oral tradition with An Evening with Madamo.

We're grateful to be able to bring her stories to our 2017-18 Renovaré Book Club members this season as Marti leads us through Corrie ten Boom's masterwork, The Hiding Place. Marti and Corrie were close friends in the last decades of Corrie's life. Marti shares a bit of how their friendship developed: 

I first met Corrie TenBoom during our first term in Rwanda at a missionary conference for all denominations
and nationalities. She was the speaker, and since we had the largest and most comfortable cabin, she came
each day for tea. Everyone wanted to be around her all the time, sit next to her at meals get her anything she wanted.

Later the doctor told her that she must stop traveling all the time into different time zones and having strange food or she would die and not have a long ministry. She established a Missionary Guest house near Kampala and we were often there with her as well as in ministry to prisons and to schools in Burundi. We were at home in Seattle in the late 1970's when she came to retire and stay in the USA. 

I was her link to that time in Africa that she loved so much. I was often with her in her home in Southern California and in meetings with her around the west. After she had a stroke and had aphasia it was my joy to go take care of her on different occasions when her regular caretakers needed a break.

Marti's mission statement is simple, but profound: To share Christ and his message with humor and humanity in order to bring persons into a vital and growing faith in Jesus Christ as Savior.