‘Jesus set me free from self-harm to travel and tell others about his love’

Iggie Clark was always destined to be an evangelist. She grew up reading tales about missionaries, but struggles with mental health in her teens nearly derailed her dreams

While Iona Clark was still in the womb, her mother regularly prayed that her unborn baby would grow up to be an evangelist. Although known to her friends as Iggie, she was named after the island of Iona, where St Columba, the Irish monk and missionary, established a monastic community in the sixth century from which most of pagan Scotland and northern England was converted to the Christian faith.

From her earliest days, Clark says she enjoyed “a weird level of friendship with Jesus”, praying for her friends on the way to school with her mum and sharing the gospel in the playground. As she grew older, reading about missionaries such as Corrie Ten Boom and Jackie Pullinger inspired her to dream about doing the same one day. “Anytime I would read an exciting book, I’d be like: ‘I’m going to smuggle Bibles into North Korea!’ Then the next week, it was: ‘I’m going to end human trafficking. That’s what I want to do with my life!’”