FALLS CHURCH, Va. (ABP) — Baptist World Aid has pledged $20,000 in emergency funds for earthquake-stricken Haiti, the head of the relief-and-development arm of the Baptist World Alliance said Jan. 13.

BWAid director Paul Montacute said grants of $10,000 each were committed to the Baptist Convention of Haiti, a group of 110 churches and 82,000 members established in 1964, and the Haiti Baptist Mission, a network of 330 churches and schools founded in 1943.

Montacute said BWAid will be launching an appeal for additional funds and expected to have more information later in the day.

Nancy and Steve James, field personnel jointly appointed to Haiti by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA, were in the United States when the 7.0 magnitude quake hit on the evening of Jan. 12. American Baptist International Ministries said the couple were driving from a conference in North Carolina to Florida and planned to catch a Missionary Flights International flight into Haiti on Jan. 14.

The James live about 100 miles from the earthquake epicenter near the capital city of Port-au-Prince. A friend watching their house said there did not appear to by any major damage nearby. That's a far different scene from Port-au-Prince, where most government buildings and a hospital were reported destroyed in the worst earthquake to strike Haiti in 200 years.

The Red Cross estimated that 3 million people were affected by the earthquake, roughly one in three Haitians.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — A diverse group of leaders who often find themselves on opposite sides of the contentious battles at the intersection of church and state joined forces Jan. 12 to unveil an unprecedented consensus statement aimed at advancing public understanding of — and preventing needless controversy over — the legal issues around religious expression in the public square.

“In a free society, there will always be conflicts of principle and of interest,” said E.J. Dionne, a Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institution fellow who moderated a panel discussion featuring some of the document’s drafters. “But there are useful conflicts and useless conflicts…. Today’s document sets its face against useless arguments.”

Led by Wake Forest University Divinity School's Center for Religion and Public Affairs, the document does not advocate a particular direction for future legislation and case law in regard to religious expression. Instead, it outlines what experts in church-state relations agree that the law currently says in an effort to stave off needlessly divisive debates and lawsuits.

The project evolved from a 2005 meeting in which experts, discussing several earlier joint statements that helped advance public understanding of rules governing religion in public schools, suggested a similar consensus document on what the law says about religious expression in the wider public square. Areas addressed include religion and politics; religious gatherings on government property; holiday or seasonal religious displays on government and private property; government-paid chaplains; and religion in the workplace.

“While this diverse group often disagrees about how the law should address legal issues, the drafters agree in many cases on what he law is today,” said Melissa Rogers, director of the Wake Forest center and a former general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Fellow document drafter Colby May, senior counsel for the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, agreed. “What really brought us together is our shared conviction that religious liberty and the freedom of conscience are in fact fundamental — they are inalienable rights for all people,” he said.

The statement's signers represent a wide swath of American religious life. Baptists supporting the project include Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission as well as Brent Walker and Holly Hollman of the Baptist Joint Committee — two organizations that often find themselves on opposing sides of church-state debates.

Groups represented by other document drafters include the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Jewish Committee, the Islamic Networks Group, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and the Sikh Council on Religion and Education.

“If experts like this can agree on what the law is, I think it commands our attention,” Rogers said.

Rogers and other drafters of the document said the legal rights and responsibilities regarding religious expression in public life are often poorly understood, and the statement is an attempt to remedy that problem.

“There has been an incredibly brain-dead discussion about religious expression in American public life in so many contexts — and part of that brain-dead nature of the conversation is that there are so many false claims” about what the law actually says about the protections for, and limits upon, individual, group and governmental expressions of religious faith, Rogers said.

“I do hope this document will help us to have a more productive discussion,” she continued.

Melissa Rogers directs the Center for Religion and Public Affairs at Wake Forest University School of Divinity at Wake Forest University Divinity School in Winston-Salem, N.C. (Religion News Service file photo by Ken Bennett/courtesy of Melissa Rogers)

The signers said they hope that their attempt to describe current law as accurately as possible will play a positive role in future debate. "That certainly will not end our debates, but it will help make them more productive," the document says.

Charles Haynes, one of the driving forces behind the document's creation as well as its predecessor statements on religion and schools, is senior scholar at the Freedom Forum’s First Amendment Center in Washington. He said he hopes the document will be used by public officials, employers and private groups the same way that the earlier statements on religion in public schools have been used by school boards, administrators and teachers.

“The consensus on what the law requires on key issues involving religion in public schools … has helped transform how many public schools apply the First Amendment,” he said. “Common ground reached on a national level frequently allows local communities to adopt policies and practices that enjoy broad public support.”

He noted that many policies on religion produced by state boards of education and school districts in the past decade quote verbatim from the earlier consensus statements — and that they have repeatedly helped defuse situations that otherwise would have exploded into litigation.

“Based on the track record of these past agreements, I am convinced that this new joint statement, covering a wide range of issues, can and will play a significant role in preventing litigation and promoting civil public discourse,” Haynes said.

Rogers said the next phase of the project is disseminating the document to public officials and others who could use it.

—Bob Allen is senior writer, and Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief, for Associated Baptist Press.

Read more:

Religious Expresion in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law

WACO, Texas (ABP) — Jury selection got under way Jan. 12 in a murder trial of a former Baptist minister accused of killing his wife.

Matt Baker, 38, a former pastor a several churches in central Texas, is on trial for the April 2006 death of his 31-year-old wife. Kari Lynn Baker's death was first ruled a suicide, but police now claim Baker drugged her with sleeping pills and smothered her with a pillow while their two daughters slept in a room nearby.

Baker

A judge in the 19th State District Court denied a motion for change of venue after Baker's attorneys argued that publicity about the case would make it impossible for him to receive a fair trial in Waco, Texas. 

A Jan. 6 story in the Waco Tribune-Herald said prosecutors intended to show that Baker not only murdered his wife, but he made improper sexual advances toward at least a dozen other young women. One woman, who allegedly was Baker's mistress, testified against him at a grand jury in exchange for immunity.

Baker, who has told his side of the story in various media outlets, denies having an affair with the woman, a former member at his church. He claims his wife was depressed and never got over the death of an infant daughter seven years earlier.

After her death Kari's parents convinced police to reopen the case. The body was exhumed, and Baker was charged with murder in September 2007, 18 months after his wife's death.

When his wife died, Baker, a graduate of Baylor University and Baylor's George W. Truett Theological Seminary, was a bivocational pastor of Crossroads Baptist Church, a 75-member congregation in Lorena, Texas, while working as a chaplain at a psychiatric treatment center for youth.

By the time of his arrest he had left the church and was working as Baptist Student Ministries director at Schreiner University in a part-time position funded by the Baptist General Convention of Texas, and as a substitute teacher in Kerrville, Texas.

The trial is expected to last about two weeks.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Art Clokey, the creator of the animated icon Gumby and his clay Christian counterparts Davey and Goliath, died Jan. 8 at his home in California. He was 88.

His son, Joe Clokey, told The New York Times his father died in his sleep.

Although Art Clokey was best known for Gumby, his work on the television program Davey and Goliath showed “the spiritual side of my dad,” Joe Clokey told the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America news service.

A forerunner of the ELCA, the United Lutheran Church in America, approached Clokey and his wife, Ruth, in 1959 to create a Gumby-like show for the church, Joe Clokey told the ELCA.

“The Lutherans contacted them, and asked them to create a show with the theme of ‘God loves everyone,”' he said. “They put all of their hearts into it.”

The Davey and Goliath episodes, which developed a loyal following from 1960 to 1975, were 15 minutes long and known for imparting simple moral lessons.

Often Davey invited trouble by ignoring the advice of Goliath, his conscience-ridden talking dog, before repenting and returning to Christian values.

VENTURA, Calif. (ABP) — The economic recession has hit larger churches harder than it has smaller ones, according to a new survey by the Barna Group .

Percentage-wise, churches with fewer than 100 members lost more of their income than churches larger than 1,000 adults (16 percent of income for smaller churches versus 9 percent for large churches). Large churches, however, were more likely to report being under financial duress. Researchers speculated that belt tightening may feel more painful for larger churches, because since they have larger budgets, in actual dollars their cuts are larger.

While most pastors and church executives said they have felt the economic pinch, for most it has not been severe so far. In all, 57 percent said the economy negatively affected their church over the past year, but only 8 percent called the effect "very negative."

About a third of churches — 35 percent — said the economy had not affected them, while about one in 11 churches — 9 percent — defied trends by describing the last year's finances as favorable.

Overall, church budgets are down about 7 percent from a year ago, the study found, but some are feeling the pain more acutely than others. The typical "down" church reported a budget down by 14 percent, and 9 percent reported losing more than 20 percent of their income during the last year.

Southern Baptists, charismatic denominations and black churches were most likely to say their budget was down. Mainline churches and those with pastors earning between $40,000 and $60,000 were most likely to be holding ground. Churches with seminary-trained pastors who have been in the ministry less than 20 years were most likely to experience budget growth.

Many church leaders said they believe the economic outlook for churches is stabilizing. About two out of three (62 percent) said their church's finances had stayed about the same during the last two months. Of those who disagreed, 21 percent said things were getting better and 17 percent said they were getting worse.

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

MALIBU, Calif. (ABP) — The Bible plays a starring role in "The Book of Eli," a post-apocalyptic action film starring Denzel Washington that opens in theaters Jan. 15.

Washington, a two-time Academy Award winner widely known in Hollywood for his Christian beliefs, portrays a lone warrior making his way across a desolate American landscape defending the world's last remaining copy of the King James Version of holy writ.

"This is a story about a man named Eli, who's been sent a message, who hears voices from God that told him to take this book, the Bible, across the country and to deliver it out West," Washington says in a movie trailer posted on ScreenVue.com, which provides movie clips for churches and ministries to use in their teachings.

Though in the vein of recent films like "2012," a blockbuster about the end of the world as predicted by the Mayan calendar, evangelical movie buffs are touting "The Book of Eli" as a rare major studio release where the protagonist is unabashedly a Christian.

"How far are we willing to go in response to God's call?" Craig Detweiler, director of Pepperdine University's Center for Entertainment, Media and Culture, writes in a study guide written for Christian viewers of the film. "What kind of sacrifices would we make to defend the Word of God?"

The movie, which has Washington's character facing down villains trying to stop him, earned an "R" rating for graphic violence and coarse language.

"In following his mission he's been given by God, he becomes more and more violent in order to get the job done," Washington explains in the trailer. "This man, Eli, has a very difficult task, but he has faith. And he makes mistakes, as we all do. Someone said there's no testimony without a test."

The movie's hard edge may give some religious moviegoers pause. Angela Walker, director of producer relations for ChristianCinema.com, wrote that she pondered the movie's objectionable content for a month after seeing an advance screening before deciding the film's spiritual themes were redeeming qualities.

"Personally, I want to support filmmakers who explore questions of faith in their films," she wrote. "For me, choosing to see this film is casting a vote for Hollywood filmmakers to keep making films about faith. It is telling them I will buy tickets to films they create about topics I'm interested in."

Detweiler pointed out that no words of profanity come from Washington's mouth. "He is clearly set apart as a holy character on a godly mission," he said. "So he acts as one would hope a man of God would act."

While Washington's character does resort to violence, Detweiler said, it is always in self-defense against another character's aggression.

"It seems comparable to the situation most of us find ourselves in — trying to follow God in a fallen world where profanity, violence and temptation is all around us," Detweiler said.

Screenwriter Gary Whitta told ChristianCinema.com that he spent a lot of time going through the Bible to find passages that Eli could quote at appropriate moments in the film. Washington, the son of a Pentecostal preacher who attends the West Angeles Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles, added some verses of his own.

Washington — ranked by Beliefnet as the second most powerful Christian in Hollywood behind Mel Gibson — described "The Book of Eli" as both "a story about faith" and "a story about good and evil" with parallels to real life.

"We're all a work in progress," he said in the trailer. "I think we're all on a journey on this earth to be better human beings and to hopefully follow the Word of God. That's about all any of us can ask for is to do the best we can with what we're given."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

ORPINGTON, England (ABP) — Persecution of Christians is set to worsen in North Korea, the world's worst trouble spot for Christians, in 2010, according to a group that tracks the status of Christians globally.

Release International, an England-based charity that supports the persecuted church around the world, made the prediction in an end-of-the-year assessment.

North Korea regularly tops the Open Doors World Watch list, a chart of the world’s worst places for Christians maintained by another group that supports the persecuted church. It uses a range of indicators to rank countries according to the intensity of persecution Christians face for actively pursuing their faith.

Christians in the oppressive, isolated communist nation are subject to imprisonment if they are found to have Christian literature or are caught holding Bible studies and prayer meetings in their homes. Their families are subject to punishment as well.

Many North Korean Christians have been sent to death camps as political prisoners, where they are frequently subjected to brutal treatment in appalling conditions.

But with a poor harvest and worsening economy, things are getting worse, said Release International partner Tim Peters.

“North Korean Christians are arguably subject to the worst persecution in the world,” he said. “As the North Korean economy continues its slow-motion collapse, reports of worsening persecution of Christians are coming out of North Korea.

“2010 is forecast to be a year of tremendous hardship and food shortages since the country's harvest in 2009 was a poor one.”

“The situation in the North is getting worse,” said former prisoner Kang Cheol Hwan, according to Release International. “It is like a giant prison camp has crossed the land. Starvation spreads out over the entire nation; it has become the norm.

“I lived in Yoduk prison camp for 10 years; I was treated like an animal there. I had watched many people die from starvation and beatings. I witnessed open executions and watched helplessly as people died miserably. These fearful scenes have not left my mind.”

Nobody knows how many Christians there are today inside North Korea. Before the communists came to power, the nation was estimated to be home to about 300,000 Christians. However, during the Korean War (1950-53) many fled to South Korea or were killed. The BBC has estimated that up to 30,000 North Koreans may continue to practice Christianity secretly in their homes.

As of press time for this story, North Korean officials were believed to still be detaining Robert Park, a Korean-American Christian activist who crossed a frozen river into the nation on Christmas Day to highlight Pyongyang's human-rights abuses.

–Paul Hobson is a news reporter for The Baptist Times, the newspaper of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. A version of this story originally appeared on the paper’s website Jan. 7.

DURHAM, N.C. (ABP) — Eight years of President George W. Bush's faith-based agenda to increase religion's role in providing social services had little impact on day-to-day ministries of local congregations, according to scholar at Duke Divinity School.

Mark Chavez, a professor of sociology and religion who directs the National Congregations Study, said the Bush administration's push to increase the flow of government money to faith-based organizations was reported widely by the media because of the church-state debates it provoked, but did little to increase the role religious organizations have long played in America's social-welfare system.

Chavez said that the proportions of congregations that provide social services (82 percent of all houses of worship), that have a staff member who devotes at least a quarter of their time to providing social services (11 percent) and that receive government funding for such services (4 percent) did not change between data collected in 1998 and in 2006-2007. In both surveys, about 6 percent of social services performed by congregations were done in collaboration with the government, while 20 percent were done in collaboration with a secular non-profit agency.

Easier availability of government funding for faith-based groups, introduced as part of welfare reform during the Clinton administration but elevated to a centerpiece of Bush's domestic agenda, did increase congregational interest in social services, however. Nearly half (47 percent) of surveyed congregations said in 2006 they would like to apply for government funding, compared to 39 percent who said so in 1998.

Chavez said that despite heated debate over the faith-based initiative, religious congregations have long played a role in providing social services and have long received public funds to support social-service programs.

The idea behind the faith-based initiative was that removing hurdles like requiring religious organizations to segregate social-service from religious functions would make it easier for churches and other houses of worship to compete with secular providers.

Chavez said the data hint that the faith-based initiative may have led some congregations already involved in social services to devote slightly more staff and volunteer time to those activities, but that overall "the faith-based initiative increased congregations' interest in social service programs, but it did not change their behavior."

–Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

WOODSTOCK, Ga. (ABP) — Southern Baptist Convention president Johnny Hunt underwent successful cancer surgery Jan. 7 at Northside Hospital in Atlanta. An update on the First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Ga., website said Hunt rested well after the operation and was expected to be released from the hospital Jan. 8. He will return to the doctor for a check-up Jan. 15.

Johnny Hunt

Hunt, 57, announced in November he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was elected SBC president in 2008 and re-elected to a customary second term last year, when he also appointed a 23-member task force to study the denomination's efficiency and effectiveness.

A one-time high-school dropout and pool-room manager before accepting Christ in 1973, Hunt is a graduate of Gardner-Webb University and Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has led the Woodstock congregation, with 17,600 members the third largest house of worship in metropolitan Atlanta, since 1986.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — Fewer death sentences were imposed in 2009 than in any year since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to year-end statistics compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

It marked the seventh consecutive annual decline — with the rationale for juries, judges and prosecutors increasingly shifting away from the morality of the death penalty toward whether the higher cost of executing criminals is worth the benefit it brings to society.

The American Law Institute — the organization that laid legal groundwork for the death penalty in the early 1960s — voted in October to abandon support for it in October. The institute — which represents about 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors — overwhelmingly adopted a resolution stating that America's half-century experiment with the death penalty has failed to develop even "a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment."

Eleven states considered repealing the death penalty in 2009, with high cost and lack of measurable benefit during severe budget crises frequently mentioned as a theme of legislative debate.

The Supreme Court has ruled that there must be a heightened level of due process in cases involving the death penalty. That makes them more expensive to prosecute than non-capital cases. There are no national figures on the cost of the death penalty, but every state that has studied it has concluded the death-penalty system is far more expensive than alternatives like life without parole.

In testimony before a panel reviewing the death penalty in New Hampshire, Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that opposes capital punishment, said those costs multiply because of how the system really works. A single death penalty trial might cost a state $1 million more than a non-death-penalty trial, he said, but only one in three capital trials may result in a death sentence. That makes the true cost of a death-penalty conviction is more like $3 million. In some states, like Maryland, only one in 10 death sentences ever results in an execution. That would mean the real cost to put a single inmate to death was $30 million.

In a nationwide poll of 500 police chiefs by the Death Penalty Information Center, officers ranked the death penalty the least-efficient use of taxpayer money to reduce violent crime. 

Another factor shaking public support for the death penalty is development of DNA evidence, which has resulted in overturning about 250 wrongful convictions since 1989, including 17 involving inmates on death row.

In March, New Mexico became the 15th state to abolish the death penalty. Gov. Bill Richardson (D), a life-long supporter of capital punishment, signed the bill. He said new DNA evidence exonerating individuals on death row caused him to reconsider his earlier views.

"Faced with the reality that our system for imposing the death penalty can never be perfect, my conscience compels me to replace the death penalty with a solution that keeps society safe," Richardson said in a statement. "In a society which values individual life and liberty above all else, where justice and not vengeance is the singular guiding principle of our system of criminal law, the potential for wrongful conviction and, God forbid, execution of an innocent person stands as anathema to our very sensibilities as human beings."

Other arguments against the death penalty claim it is imposed unfairly. Deacons at First Baptist Church in Jefferson City, Mo., joined more than 300 other faith groups, businesses and organizations calling for a moratorium on executions while the state's death penalty is studied.

"The death penalty as now administered appears to be exercised often in unfair ways, with the burden of death falling on African Americans disproportionately, with crimes against males punished by death more than crimes against females and the rich executed far less [often] than the poor," John Baker, pastor of First Baptist Church in Columbia, Mo., said at a press conference held at the church Jan. 6.

In August the federal Supreme Court ordered a hearing to receive testimony about whether new evidence establishes the innocence of Troy Davis, an African-American man on death row for the 1991 murder of a white police officer in Savannah, Ga.

Seven of nine witnesses who testified they saw Davis shoot and kill Officer Mark Allen McPhail later recanted, saying police pressured them into falsely fingering Davis. One of two witnesses who did not recant allegedly told family and friends that he is the actual murderer.

Supporters of the fallen officer say Davis was convicted on physical evidence and should be executed in the name of justice.  But Alan Bean, an ordained American Baptist minister who runs a criminal-justice-reform organization called Friends for Justice, said manipulation of eyewitness testimony is a problem in the court system nationwide.

"Not only do police officers and investigators coerce 'eyewitnesses' into cooperating with the government's theory of the case," said Bean, a white man who helped bring national attention to a noose-hanging incident that revealed racial tensions in Jena, La. "There is growing evidence that even sincere and well-intentioned eyewitness testimony if far less reliable than is generally believed."

Bean started Friends of Justice in response to a famous drug sting in Tulia, Texas, in 1999, in which more than half of the town's black male residents were arrested and convicted on the questionable testimony of a single undercover officer. Bean said he is monitoring the Troy Davis case because of its similarity to one involving Curtis Flowers, a black man behind bars for a 1996 execution-style slaying of four people in Winona, Miss., who has been tried five times without a final conviction by the state. 

More executions were carried out in 2009 than in 2008 — 52 compared to 37 — but the Death Penalty Information Center said that was partly due to backlog from a de facto moratorium on executions for four months of 2008, as the Supreme Court addressed controversy over the use of lethal injection. Texas led all states with 24 executions — four times the number executed in No. 2 Alabama. California has the largest number of inmates on death row — 690 — in part because executions are on hold because of challenges to the three-drug protocol used in the state's capital-punishment method.

-30-

Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan (BP)—A Jan. 2 earthquake that struck a mountainous region of Tajikistan has left hundreds, perhaps thousands, of villagers homeless in bitter winter weather, Southern Baptist humanitarian workers in Central Asia report.

The 5.3-magnitude quake struck in Gorno-Badakhshansky, the same area hit hard by a tremor in March 2009. Southern Baptist relief work from the earlier earthquake still is ongoing in the region, and the field partner involved in that effort said he expects to find that many houses weakened by last year’s quake have now collapsed.

The field partner reported by e-mail immediately after the tremor struck: “About one hour ago, we felt a rather good shake here. Power went off for one hour and when it came back up we checked online for the location. Seems it was the same place as last year between Vanj and Yazgulom. I was there a few days ago to check on construction progress. I was shown several houses (not included in the project) that had opened big cracks since our initial inspection. This likely was a result of aftershocks from the last year’s quake.”

Emergency official Munira Nazariyeva said Jan. 4 that on-site inspections counted 783 people homeless, 98 mud-brick houses destroyed and nearly 1,000 others damaged by the quake, news agencies reported. No fatalities have been recorded, but authorities said electricity supplies and communications in the area were cut off and rockfalls and mudslides blocked some roads.

Southern Baptist humanitarian workers in the country are gathering information and beginning to prepare for potential relief efforts, said Francis Horton, who with his wife, Angie, directs work in Central and South Asia for Baptist Global Response, an international relief and development organization.

“It will take some time to get accurate figures on the homeless. This field partner is continuing an assessment of the situation and will be designing a response that will best assist those affected by this earthquake,” Horton said.

“He says the weather is clear and the road is firm for now. They should be able to make some progress over the next couple of days to clarify the picture.”

Because earthquakes are common the region, the field partners, as well as other organizations and local governments, are well-versed in disaster response and have effectively responded to earlier disasters in that area, Horton noted.

“They work very well with other organizations and the local government to get help to the people,” Horton said. “We will await the results of their assessment and move forward according their recommendation.”

For a decade, volunteers from throughout the United States have spent their Christmas vacations in Eastern Europe making the harsh winter a little warmer for orphans.

Volunteers serve with Houston-based Children’s Emergency Relief International— the overseas division of Baptist Child & Family Services— distributing boots, thick socks, hats and scarves to orphaned children.

This year, volunteers from Texas, West Virginia, Alabama and Virginia delivered the winter apparel to about 3,000 residents of government-run orphanages and homes for the physically and developmentally disabled in Transniestria.

In addition to meeting physical needs, CERI volunteers also take turns sharing the gospel with residents. At one orphanage, a student from the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor shared her Christian testimony. She spoke of a father she never knew who left her mother before she was born, and she talked about the questioning and grief she carried as a child because of it.

CERI supporters hand-knit winter hats to distribute to orphans in Transniestria to protect the children from frostbite.

“There was not a dry eye in the place as she described the hope and love she found when she was introduced to her Heavenly Father who gives her endless love and heals her every hurt,” said CERI Project Director Russ Massey. “Often, children in these orphanages wonder how Americans can relate to what they have experienced, but each year we witness how God transcends cultural and geographical barriers in unique ways.”

Winter-wear missions to Transniestria and Moldova began in 1999 when a mission team from Kingwood First Baptist Church noticed widespread frostbite among orphans throughout the country. Since then, CERI has provided more than 83,000 winter boots and socks.

“For children who are told how to spend every moment of every day, being able to have something of their very own means the world to them,” said Leslie Mitchell, BCFS senior program director of residential services. “We made sure each child got the opportunity to pick out their own boots, socks, hat and scarf.”