DUNCANVILLE—Wayne Graham, worship pastor at First Baptist Church in Duncanville, brought more than choir robes to the Baptist seminary in Argentina. He delivered joy.
The Duncanville congregation’s choir decided more than a year ago to stop wearing robes. The church had not found a new home for them, despite their great condition.
Wayne Graham, worship pastor at First Baptist Church in Duncanville, delivers choir robes to Joy Seguel at International Baptist Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires, Argentina.Erik Bersusky, an Argentine native who works on the church’s maintenance staff, asked if the robes might be donated to International Baptist Theological Seminary in Buenos Aires, where his niece is employed.
Graham has traveled to Argentina a dozen times on mission endeavors, and he knew missionaries affiliated with the seminary. So, he responded to the request with an immediate, “Of course.”
Bersusky contacted his niece, who only the day before had been praying for robes for a newly organized gospel chorale.
Overcoming obstacles
Next, Graham tackled the issue of transporting the robes. Several years ago, a missionary told him a story of grandparents who had shipped a tricycle to Argentina for $200. Since the robes would be much heavier, the church needed a different delivery method.
Graham contacted a friend in the airline industry who allows Graham to use his employee travel vouchers for ministry endeavors. So, they launched a plan for Graham to fill two suitcases with robes and pack his personal travel items in a backpack, and stay in Argentina only 36 hours.
Members of the Duncanville church choir donated a couple of suitcases for the robes. They weighed the suitcases to make sure they fell within the 50-pound limit, they sent 32 robes—two more robes than requested.
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After leading Sunday morning worship, Graham caught the first flight to Buenos Aires and arrived Monday morning.
That afternoon, he met Joy Seguel, Bersusky’s niece, at the seminary with the robes.
An answer to prayer
“She was almost in tears holding up this robe,” Graham recalled. “Here was something she had prayed about and received a text the next day saying it was going to happen. It was just a wonderful thing of how God was working.”
“It was the first day for new semester, so I sat there from 5 to 8:30 p.m. just meeting students as they came in. In my broken Spanish and their broken English, we communicated.”
Graham felt blessed to hear each student express a deep desire to serve the Lord and spread the gospel through music.
The next day, several members of the chorale sang for him just before he left for the airport.
A flood of joy
“The thing that struck me so was that three of them were people I had talked to the night before, and I knew their hearts,” he said. “As they sang, you could just see the joy flood over them as they sang about their Savior. It was glorious. It was God-honoring. It was praiseworthy.”
A series of circumstances caused his trip home to take about 24 hours, but Graham didn’t mind the delay.
“My heart was incredibly full knowing God had used the resource of these robes that we no longer were going to use to be an encouragement to the body of Christ there,” Graham said.
“It was a great confluence of God weaving a bunch of things together to make this happen.”
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