Janella Abbey (1947-2026) was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts, the oldest of three sisters and one brother. Soon, the family moved to Orlando, Florida, where she grew up in the Adventist educational system, including Southern Adventist University. While Janella worked as a research secretary at Loma Linda one summer, she met me, a young mathematics student from British Columbia. This inspired us to move to Walla Walla University, where she graduated with a biology degree.
We married in Tennessee in 1969, and I completed a master’s in biology from Walla Walla in 1971. That year, we moved to Canadian Union College (CUC), where our two daughters, Kelly and Karen, were born. In 1976, we moved with our two- and four-year-old daughters to Solusi College in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and experienced the richness and challenges of cross-cultural service. Because of war in the country, Solusi temporarily closed in 1978. However, God’s care and provision convinced us that He could equip us to serve wherever He directed.
After 41 years of educational service, including another 20 years at CUC and 14 years at Union College, we retired in 2012. However, our interest in missions, fostered from a young age, compelled us to sign on with AFM in March 2011 as Asia field directors.
We had first become acquainted with AFM while housing missionaries attending meetings at Union College. Then Adventist Frontiers began arriving at our home. Several years of inspiring reading convinced us that AFM was practicing Christ’s method of outreach. Although we were strongly drawn to AFM’s service model, we felt we did not qualify to be frontline missionaries. Yet God’s Spirit continued to whisper, reminding us of what He could do with our experience teaching, counseling and mentoring youth.
After AFM training, we launched to Thailand as field directors in June 2013, where we spent the next five years encouraging and supporting career missionaries in three countries. We immersed ourselves in the local culture and were blessed and enriched by the people of Thailand and those in two creative access countries. We returned to the States in June 2018 for our second retirement.
Janella is survived by her husband, Don; their daughters, Kelly (Brenden Goertzen) and Karen (Joseph Sky); sisters Fran Barger and Ginger Kirk; and grandchildren Kendra, Byron, and Jace Goertzen, and Abbey and Aaron Sky.
Janella is resting in Jesus. Although I will miss her profoundly, I look forward to a bright future as described in Revelation 21:4 with no more tears, suffering, pain, or death. I am sustained by many wonderful memories from our time with family, and in the life Janella and I shared together. I am encouraged by 2 Timothy 4:7, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness.”
Janella’s wish is that each of you will be in that new Earth wrapped in the beautiful peace of our loving God.
Editor’s note: The AFM family will truly miss Janella. Our sympathies are with Don and the family.
