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About the Cougills
Scott and Cat made a major change into full-time ministry
with Youth for Christ (YFC) in June 2002 when Scott started serving as
Inter-nation Project Manager in the Asia Pacific Area office in Melbourne,
Australia. Before this, Scott’s previous experience with YFC had been four years
on the Board of Directors of
Central Indiana YFC in Indianapolis, Indiana USA. Over that time he saw
the tremendous impact YFC had in reaching young people in Indiana, the US,
and across the world.
Both Scott and Cat grew up in the USA in the state of
Indiana with Cat
graduating from Anderson
College and working as a teacher for 5 years. Scott graduated from
Wabash College with a
Bachelors degree in Psychology and received a Masters in Business
Administration in Marketing and Management from
Indiana University in
1991. Scott has worked in sales, marketing, and management roles with technology
firms including:
IBM, Source Services (now
kForce), Integrity
Online/Lightdog, and
FirstMile.
In May 2004, Scott was named Director of YFCI's Asia
Pacific Area. The
Asia Pacific Area
is huge and contains approximately 1.75 billion young people under the age
of 20. This equates to around 2/3 of the world’s youth population. YFC has
well-established ministries in 17 of the 57 nations. Scott leads the effort
of enabling the existing 17 YFC national ministries and the pioneering
outreach to young people in countries across Asia and the Pacific where YFC
is not located. Through intensive relationship building with each of the
National Directors, Board Members, and key staff of each nation, he hopes to
begin to be able to earn the trust of the YFC centres and understand their
existing outreach to young people. Then, by playing an "enabler"
role, connect different YFC nations to assist each other and connect outside
resources to the appropriate YFC centre that would benefit most.
We are in the process of moving the Area office (and our
family) from Melbourne, Australia to
Chiang Mai, Thailand.
This is very important as the YFC Asia Pacific Area team plays an
"enabler" role, working closely with the indigenous
National Directors, national board members, and staff of our 17 national
ministries. In addition, we provide strategic planning and oversight of
YFC's pioneering outreach to young people in countries across Asia and the
Pacific where YFC is not located.
To be effective and enable more young people to have an
opportunity to become followers of Jesus Christ requires strong relationships
between the diverse national ministries of this area. These relationships take
time and trust and are very hard to build over e-mail or the phone. Frequent,
personal visits and time together is critical to have meaningful impact.
Many of these cultures require connecting with our entire family to build
relationships over time. In the past, time away from our families and the
costs from Melbourne have prohibited this. Making this move communicates our
true concern and commitment that we have for our Asian ministries.
Being closer to the majority of our
pioneering opportunities will also help us be more effective in starting
new ministries and assist us in understanding and effectively communicating
our needs to outside interested people, churches, and organizations.
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