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Hazel Terhune

photo of Hazel Terhune
EOS May 2008 Hazel Terhune, missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church, retired 31 May, 2008 after almost 40 years of service in Japan.

Hazel's most recent assignment was with the United Church of Christ in Japan, a union of churches founded by Methodist, United Brethren, and other major U.S. and Canadian Protestant denominations in 1941. Based at the national headquarters in Tokyo, Hazel served as the editor of the organization’s English newsletter, chair of its editorial committee, and helped with English correspondence and the preparation of speeches and reports in English for presentation by church leaders at international and ecumenical gatherings.

Since 1998 Hazel served as the Mission Personnel Secretary with the Council on Cooperative Mission, which makes missionary assignments in Japan. In this position, Hazel worked with the sending boards of the United Church of Christ’s member denominations. She informed them of personnel requests from Japan, helped locate appropriate positions for potential candidates, and assisted with the orientation and pastoral care of missionaries serving throughout Japan.

In addition to those responsibilities, Hazel also assisted with church school worship services and was a member of the administrative board and evangelism committee at Tokyo Ikebukuro Church, as was her husband Bob, also a retired GBGM missionary. Hazel and Bob also served as counselors of the church’s young adult group and entertained young people from both the church and the junior college in their home.

Hazel serveed as the United Methodist missionary liaison with the GBGM in New York, an elected position she has held since 1994. She also utilized her skills as a writer in service through the years: she participated in the writing of Sharing Christian Mission, published by the GBGM to supplement study materials for the 1992 mission emphasis on Japan, and was on the editorial staff of the Japan Christian Review, an annual journal published in English by the largest Christian publisher in Japan, until it was discontinued in 1998.

Born in Pennsylvania, Hazel majored in elementary education and religion at Waynesburg College, then earned a master’s degree in from the Religious Education Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, DC, where she met and married Bob. The Terhunes have served as missionaries in Japan since 1969; before they were assigned to Tokyo, they served as district evangelists to small, struggling churches in a remote area of Japan until 1983.

Bob and Hazel are the parents of three adult children: Debra, Russell and Kenneth, all of whom live in the United States.

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