Career Missionaries: Hong Kong
Born in San Jose, Costa Rica, Patrick was adopted by missionaries Harry and Jene Nachtigall. His family relocated to San Francisco in the late 1970s and eventually settled in Portland, Oregon. Patrick was an active part of the Church of God in his hometown of Tigard, Oregon.
Jamie was also born into a missions-minded family. Both her parents (Russ and Sharon Skaggs) and her grandparents served as missionaries for the Church of God in Egypt. Between the ages of eight and seventeen, Jamie grew up living and going to school in Cairo. Like Patrick, she is a TCK (third-culture kid) and has always felt more at home on an airplane than in any one country.
Both Jamie and Patrick graduated from Anderson University. Patrick spent a year teaching in South Korea following graduation. In college, Jamie spent her summers overseas, traveling and working in India and Hong Kong. Between the two of them, they have traveled to nearly sixty countries around the world. Patrick also holds a master's degree from Yale University, where he studied the role of Christianity during the process of modernization in the People's Republic of China.
Prior to accepting this assignment as a career missionary to Hong Kong, Patrick served as an associate pastor in Tigard, Oregon, and New Haven, Connecticut. He is an ordained minister in the Church of God. Previously, Jamie was the membership coordinator for both the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Centre for British Art.
Patrick and Jamie dated for five years before getting married in 1997. They have had many similar experiences and share many of the same interests. They place Christ first in their marriage and view their life together as a great adventure. Both have lost a parent to cancer and have had moments where they were severely tested, but they draw strength from Christ and one another in the difficult times. In January 2003, Patrick and Jamie were blessed with their first child, Marco.
Their duties in the Hong Kong Church of God include serving as pastors, mentoring pastors-in-training, leading cross-cultural trips, counseling, and teaching. Patrick also writes "Global Snapshots," a regular column in Missions magazine that discusses missions from a global perspective.
Project # 42.10068