Our Evangelists: Meet Jenny

Imagine being called by God to share the love and light of His Son, Jesus Christ with the world, as your vocation! That is the calling gifted evangelists feel when they decide to train to become a Church Army Evangelist. They are passionate people with a gift for sharing Good News and showing, through actions, that hope can shine even in the most desperate situations. But the life of a Church Army Evangelist looks different for everyone. Each person has their own unique calling to a different context, whether that is working with one of our Centres of Mission, talking with prisoners as a prison chaplain, or even fostering young children. 

Jenny Falcón-Otero is an Evangelist at our Gwent Valleys Centre of Mission which is a partnership with the Diocese of Monmouth, situated in an ex-mining area of the Welsh valleys where she felt called to relocate to shortly after she was Commissioned and now lives and fosters with her husband. This is just part of her story…

Jenny says ‘I have always been an evangelist because I just can’t stop talking about Jesus! It is always encouraging to see people take the next step in their faith journey. Being a CA Evangelist enables me to go out with the blessing and backing of Church Army which helps me feel more empowered to reach even more people.

I live with my husband and our foster daughter. Until we moved to join Gwent Valleys Centre of Mission, we chose to live in community with my parents. Throughout lockdown we had others living with us at various points, including my sister and her partner, two friends from Spain, a young person with learning difficulties who joined us through the Shared Lives Scheme, and two foster children on different occasions. Our family has always been a bit like that, we usually have someone either living with us or about to move in.

I knew for a long time that fostering was a calling God placed on my life. We began with respite fostering but when COVID struck, an urgent need for new carers quickly developed and we found ourselves on the fast-track to being foster parents. We received a referral for a little boy for six weeks. We decided this would be manageable, but it wasn’t until eight months later that he moved on from us.

During this time we’ve seen God working and transforming the lives of the three children we have now fostered, each in a different way but each equally as impactful. God has been with us through the ups and downs we’ve faced with each child and our hope and prayer is that any seeds of His love we have sown into these precious children will go with them into whatever they face next in their journey.’