Posted: 6/13/03
| Backyard Bible clubs were part of the mission activities at MissionsFest 2003. |
MissionsFest 2003
had family emphasis
By Ken Camp & Heather Price
Texas Baptist Communications
SAN ANTONIO–Retirees worked alongside elementary school-aged children during MissionsFest 2003, painting, building, playing games and sharing the love of Jesus.
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| MissionsFest 2003, conducted in San Antonio June 8-12, included various missions projects around the city. |
The intergenerational missions event drew 160 volunteers from 11 states to 16 ministry sites around San Antonio, according to coordinator Kristy Carr from Woman's Missionary Union in Birmingham, Ala.
Woman's Missionary Union of Texas, national WMU and San Antonio Baptist Association sponsored the missions service event June 8-12. WMU promoted the event both as MissionsFest and FamilyFest this year, seeking to encourage families to serve together in missions.
“I like the family emphasis,” said Robert Krause, pastor of First Baptist Church in Carrizo Springs. “When families can take their kids and show them what missions is all about, it makes a lasting impact.”
A team from Carrizo Springs worked side-by-side with volunteers from First Baptist Church in Madison, Ala., to repair and refurbish Primera Iglesia Bautista in San Antonio.
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“I was committed to come myself,” said Krause, whose teen-age daughter, Bethany, also participated in the missions event. “Every time I've taken people on a missions trip, they come home with a new commitment to the mission field right around us.”
Four families from First Baptist Church in Granbury participated in the missions trip. They were among the 19 volunteers from the church, ranging in age from 6 to 76.
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| Evelyn Horton and Pam and Berwyn Adams play an outdoor game with a child at MissionsFest in San Antonio. Horton is a veteran missions volunteer. The Adamses, from Grandbury, brought their family on the mission trip for the first time. |
“For about half our team, it was their first time ever to come on a mission trip,” said Pam Adams, missions committee chair at the Granbury church.
Mrs. Adams and her husband, Berwyn, brought their 6-year old daughter, Melaine, and their 9-year-old son, Connor.
“Pam has been before, but for the kids and me, it was our first mission trip,” said Adams, who took time off from his job driving a bread delivery truck. “We felt like our kids are at an age where they could appreciate an experience like this.”
The Granbury volunteers led a Backyard Bible Club on the lawn of Candlewood Elementary School and conducted a door-to-door evangelistic survey of the neighborhood for a church that meets at the school.
Other participants were mission trip veterans, like Evelyn Horton, who turns 77 later this month. She recalled student missions projects during her time at Baylor University, “playing my violin under the street lights in Waco to draw a crowd.”
She worked with the “Invincibles” home missions program in 1945 and 1946. Fifty years later, after her husband's death, she served a two-year term in Guatemala as an International Service Corps volunteer.
Not long before the San Antonio project, she returned from a missions experience in the Dominican Republic. “I just love mission trips,” she said.
The San Antonio mission left Ryan Brown, a high school student from Granbury, with memories to last a lifetime. And most of those memories focus on a 2-year-old boy named Jordan.
“It took one smile from him, and I was hooked. That smile made the trip,” Brown recalled. “I fell in love with a 2-year old.”
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| A team from Carrizo Springs worked side-by-side with volunteers from First Baptist Church in Madison, Ala., to repair and refurbish Primera Iglesia Bautista in San Antonio. |
Brown's 12-year-old brother, Warren, summarized the feelings of many of the young participants, saying, “It's so cool. I get to be a missionary.”
Allison Nolan from Calvary Baptist Fellowship in Houston was part of team working with San Antonio's Calvary Baptist Church.
While distributing flyers for the church, she met 13-year-old Xeniesha Barnett. As the two talked, Nolan sensed the girl's spiritual hunger. Ultimately, the young teenager prayed to trust Jesus Christ as Savior.
“She was telling me that today is the best day ever for her,” Nolan said. “This was an awesome experience. I wouldn't have expected it to happen. It really stretched me.”
Members of the Calvary Baptist Fellowship team confessed that they expected to be strictly on the “giving” end of missions as they worked with the predominantly African-American Calvary Baptist Church in one of San Antonio's poorest neighborhoods. But they found themselves receiving as much as they gave.
“We came to encourage them but got so much encouragement back from them,” said Stacy Shipferling of Calvary Fellowship.
Heather Dutton, another volunteer from Calvary Fellowship, echoed those feelings.
“We didn't know what to expect. We thought it would be a different culture, but they were no differences at all,” she said. “We just clicked. They welcomed us like no other church has.”
Brett Dutton, pastor of Calvary Baptist Fellowship, emphasized that the missions experience was more than a one-time project. It was the beginning of a reciprocal missions partnership between Calvary of Houston and Calvary of San Antonio. The San Antonio church now is planning a trip later this year to work with the Houston church.
“I bonded with the pastor there, Kevin Nelson. We don't want this to be a one-time thing. It is a long-time partnership,” Dutton said. “It was an unexpected blessing.”
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