Andy and Ellen Collins
c/o Harding
1000 Alexander Steward Dr.
Hillsborough, NC 27278
Email: Andy and Ellen Collins

Andy and Ellen ended their last term of service with the PC(USA) in December 2005. They will be serving through Interserve at the Christian Communications Institute of Payay University in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

"We felt a call to return to serve the Asian people who had taught us so much and whom we have learned to respect," explain mission specialists Andrew and Ellen Collins, who are serving a third term in Kathmandu, Nepal. Jointly appointed by the United Church of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and the Presbyterian Church (USA), Andy and Ellen are serving with the United Mission to Nepal (UMN).

For nearly fifty years, the UMN has coordinated the work of missionaries from over thirty different Protestant denominations and 15 countries. As an audio-visual consultant of the UMN's communications office, Andy is involved with the creation of training, educational and promotional materials for the UMN. His particular focus is video production. Ellen has been a health education consultant for the UMN's Community Development & Health Project, which serves the rural populations in the districts of Lalitpur and Makwanpur. The Collins have two sons. Christopher Jai was born in Lalitpur in 1995, at the hospital where Ellen is based. Jonathan Prem was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, while the Collins were on home assignment in 2002.

"Andy and I are both Presbyterian missionary kids," writes Ellen, "and have felt that our backgrounds have been a major part of the calling we have had as adults to work in the developing world. We feel very comfortable in the Asian context, having grown up in Thailand (Andy) and Nepal (Ellen). Nepal is one of the poorest countries on earth, landlocked and mountainous, a Hindu kingdom opened to the outside world only in the 1950s. There is great need here—physical, social, and spiritual—and we are privileged to be among those God has enabled to live and work with the Nepali people.

Letters from
the Collins Family

• September 2005
• September 2004
• March 2003
• November 2002
• June 2001
• November 2000
• October 2000
• September 2000
• August 2000
• July 2000
• November 1999

Andy's and Ellen's lives have paralleled. Both attended missionary schools as children, international schools as teenagers, and both spent their final two years of high school in the United States. After attending Presbyterian colleges, they met while serving as PC(USA) mission volunteers in Thailand (1987-1990).

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Ellen in the daughter of PC(USA) missionaries Dr. Richard and Suzanne Harding, who retired from active service in early 2002. She was raised in Nepal. While earning a BA in cultural anthropology from Davidson College in North Carolina, she spent a term at the Madras Christian College in Madras, India, and a term in Mexico. She spent her summers working for the Migrant Workers Head Start Program in Clinton, North Carolina. After graduation she spent three years teaching English in Thailand, then returned to the United States to earn a master's degree in public health from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Ellen then worked as a consultant for the Institute for Development Training, a women's health organization in Chapel Hill.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Andy was raised in Thailand where his father, the Rev. Robert Collins, still serves as a Presbyterian missionary on the faculty of the McGilvary School of Theology. Andy earned a BA degree in international studies and communications from Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington. After teaching English as a volunteer in Thailand, he returned to the United States to earn a master's degree in technology for international development from North Carolina State University in Raleigh. In addition to working as a photographer, Andy was a video producer for the Church of Christ in Thailand and a media assistant in Durham, North Carolina.

Note: The Collins' appointment is administered by the Common Global Ministries Board of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples). The PC(USA) contributes $10,000 per year to their support.

The Collins are members of the New Hope Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Birthdays:
Andy - September 3
Ellen - March 6
Christopher - September 28, 1995
Jonathan - January 3, 2002