Community on Bonaire: Olly Simons and His Service for God

Olly Simons (right) joins fellow interns Bryson Browning (left) and Burke Murray (center) this summer, serving together on the island of Bonaire.

Olly Simons is super excited to be in a new country trying foods, experiencing new culture and, of course, working for Jesus. As someone who has been interested in missions since eighth grade, Olly jumped at the chance to use his technical engineering science skills overseas.

TWR found Olly in his spring semester of freshman year at Cru, a campus ministry. A roaming mobilization partner known as The Traveling Team spoke of the unreached, and Olly’s ears and heart listened. After follow-up phone calls, an opportunity for an internship at TWR presented itself. Although he nearly forgot the application over the summer, Olly finished it in the fall and has been learning more about TWR ever since.

Since eighth grade, God sparked in Olly a keen interest in missions. A trip to Mexico caught his eye, but COVID shut down that opportunity. Instead, Olly built connections with his local community and showed the light of Jesus to his neighbors through various summer camps. 

As a rising junior at Coastal Carolina University, Olly doesn’t quite know everything yet. One of his challenges this summer is learning how to apply educational knowledge to keep up on his projects. He hopes to gain engineering experience but also be able to perform well. Always one to maintain a positive attitude, Olly says he is “ultimately excited for the opportunity and the challenges ahead!”

On Bonaire, Olly is one of three interns. Among engineering activities, they’re also exploring the small island. He specifically mentions that there are only two fast-food chains: Subway and KFC. Surprisingly, there’s no small amount of Chinese food.

Burke Murray, one of the other interns on the island, says Olly is “always positive and never does not have a smile on his face. He is also always willing to help, and very curious.” Burke says if Olly were a Disney character, he would either be the dog or a kid from the animated movie Up.

Even though there is a language barrier (Bonaire’s officially recognized languages are Dutch and Papiamentu), Olly admires the close-knit community.

“With the entire island having a population of about 26,000 residents, everyone seems to know everybody,” he says. “That has been made apparent to me every time we walk around town with our boss. He will stop approximately every minute or so to say hello and catch up with someone we didn’t even notice! Less than a week in to living here has made it quite clear: The island of Bonaire is the definition of community-built, run and supported.”

Fun fact: Olly’s high school graduating class in Ridgefield, Washington, had only 14 students, which was the largest in school history!