Bohol, Joy Eva

Joy Eva A. Bohol is a missionary with the General Board of Global Ministries of The United Methodist Church. Since July 2023, she has been serving at Regional Migration Specialist, Europe.

In her role, she strives for closer contact with UMCOR grantees/funding partners and potential grantees/funding partners in Europe, better awareness of Global Ministries missionaries in the region who work with migrants, themes of migration and refugee ministries, and increased understanding of regional migration policies, practices and flows. She is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

Previously, Joy Eva was assigned as program executive for youth engagement at the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva (2017-23). A former mission intern (the intern program was a forerunner to Global Mission Fellows) and mission advocate for the Young Adult Mission Service of the agency, she was commissioned to her present work in October 2015.

Joy Eva’s name is short for “Joyful Evangelist.” She is from Cebu City in the Philippines, where she is a member of the Labangon First United Methodist Church of the Visayas Philippines Annual Conference. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in mass communication, majoring in journalism, from the University of the Philippines. Her mother is clergy.

Joy Eva has worked for an online newspaper, and served as national president of the United Methodist Youth Fellowship in the Philippines, a team member for Discipleship Resources in the Philippines and an Emmaus Walk community coordinator. Participating in a government-sponsored exchange program in South Korea, under the Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines, she led the case study presentation of the Status of Young People in the Philippines. She has taken part in mission trips within and outside the Philippines.

Luke 4:17–20, the passage about Jesus engaging with the people in the synagogue, strongly influenced Joy Eva as a young person. “When Jesus read Isaiah’s scroll, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,’” she said, “it resonated with me that God’s calling to serve God’s people in fighting for social justice, struggling with those in the margins and being in solidarity with the oppressed is for everyone, wherever you are in the world.

“God’s mission is for everyone from everywhere to everywhere. Jesus knew exactly what his purpose was. We should, too, and live out Jesus’ mission statement as found in Luke 4.”

Joy Eva has known for years that she would enter mission as a vocation.