About Us

Our life's calling has been seeking God and finding Him. In His Presence He has again and again rekindled our passion for Him.

Being both Swiss we met in UK while doing our theological studies at the London School of Theology. We both sensed independently the Lord giving us a heart to serve the Chinese people. So we spent 17 years in Taiwan. During the latter part Marc was the director of an international organization, steering it towards a new vision. Much of the fruit we were able to see was borne out of Marc's monthly times of 24 hours of seeking the Lord.

From 2005-2016 we served together in a bigger local church in the capital of Switzerland. Marc was the senior pastor. The focus was on seeking Him and His Presence. At the beginning the church went through a major crisis and so did we. But we give Him all the glory for an increase in growth and health within our church over the past few years. At the end of 2016 we were able to hand over all responsibilities to a competent leader and a wonderful team!

In recent years both of our kids left home. So we realized we were now free to start something totally new for our third phase of life!

Business

At the beginning of 2017 we became business people! We started our own limited liability company. Until 2019 at least once a year we went to China where we worked on establishing our business network and visit friends. Our goal was to invite small groups of business people from China to come and stay with us in our apartment above lake Thun. We also worked together with a local university. On weekends we took some of their delegations from China around Switzerland. But due to the covid situation in China our business with Chinese people virtually came to a full stop. At this stage we only offer day tours or a Berne city tour.

The second highlight of our company is described here on this present website: encounter.gd. Since 2020 we focused more on our counselling services.

Qualifications

We have almost 40 years of experience in Christian full time service, 17 of which we served in Asia and eleven years as senior pastor of a church in Berne.

The last 20 years in particular as senior leaders have had a great impact on us. Topics such as marriage, conflict, exhaustion, working in a different culture, abuse, loss, trauma, deliverance ministry, healing prayer, etc. were part of our everyday life.

For years we have been aware of our own issues. During our yearly "week of a quiet" we often received more insights. Back in our daily lives we put things into practice.

Marc is still the president of the Swiss board of the organization with which we served in Taiwan. Marc has done quite some training as a leader.

Katrina has specialized in counselling. She has quite some experience in the area of sexual abuse. Katrina has done two post graduate courses (Certificate of Advan ced Studies). One is on "Systemic Solution Oriented Counselling" and the other one on "Trauma Counselling". She has also been trained as a marriage counsellor.

Over the years we have attended and led many different kinds of quiet retreats in Switzerland and abroad.