A missions team from Northport Baptist Church, Northport, and Lord of the Harvest Baptist Church, Northport, traveled to Tennessee on July 11 to help construct a 16,000-square-foot facility. During the trip, the 13-member team from varied professions worked on Sheetrock and structural support.
For the past 17 years, this group has assisted churches in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Oklahoma, Georgia and Alabama.
“God has always picked the project for these men by showing them where they need to be at a particular time to assist a local church with its construction project,” said trip coordinator Bill McDonald. “It is difficult to fully explain how much a blessing these men receive from participating in these projects.”
James Fisk, a member of Dawson Memorial Baptist Church, Birmingham, served God through a missions trip to Venezuela this summer. He spent most of his time examining eyes, evaluating cataracts, treating ocular disease, improving vision and practicing Spanish.
After a long day of standing on concrete in the relentless tropical heat and being slightly dehydrated, he was exhausted when an older Wayuu lady came to their tent.
Through a translator he learned she could no longer earn money for her family by making handbags. She held up her own handbag on the end of a shoulder strap; intricately beautiful with many colors and designs, albeit rather dirty. She could not see well enough to sew. He looked into her eyes expecting to see cataracts, but instead saw a nice red retinal reflex, so he spent about a minute refracting her and found out she was farsighted.
Fisk found a pair of glasses in their collection of donated glasses that was close to her prescription to correct her distance vision first. Then he found a pair that would correct her close-up vision so that she could see to sew.
She looked at her hands and gave a little shriek. Then she looked at her handbag and could see little individual threads. “The woman came flying out in a torrent, and she jumped up to hug me tight,” Fisk said. The translator told Fisk, “She said she had prayed to God for someone to come and help her eyes.” Someone had donated eyeglasses that changed another person’s life. And Fisk was privileged to be in the right place at the right time – the middleman who matched the gift to the need.
A missions team from Thelma Baptist Church, Wetumpka, recently completed a missions outreach trip to the people of the Czech Republic. Because the country received its freedom from communism only 15 years ago, 49 percent of the population claim atheism as its religion. However, the team from Thelma found that the country was open to hearing about Jesus. Thirteen men from Thelma formed a basketball team and traveled to Pardubice, Czech Republic, to run a basketball camp for children.
During the day they conducted two basketball camps at no cost to the children. Each day team members led Bible devotions for those attending. During the evenings the team challenged local Czech teams in friendly games of basketball. At halftimes Thelma Baptist team members shared testimonies. The team from Thelma distributed 40 Czech language Bibles, 125 Frisbees with the gospel presented in Czech and T-shirts donated by the University of Alabama and Auburn University.
A highlight of the children’s camp was when they divided up into Alabama and Auburn teams and had their own version of the Iron Bowl.
After the team returned from the Czech Republic they continued relationships with others through e-mail. One young man who translated for the team received Christ through a conversation by e-mail with team members.
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