At an age when most people are sitting in recliners or at least slowing down, 87-year-old Eva Nell Hunter, a member of Central Baptist Church, Decatur, keeps a pace that would leave people many years younger in the dust.
Hunter, the 2015 Lifetime of Mission Service Award recipient, is best known to Alabama Baptists for her work in church libraries, but according to Pastor Rob Jackson, describing her as a librarian “is a vast understatement.”
According to Jackson, Hunter has a heart for missions like no other. “I can think of no one in my 25 years in the ministry who comes close to being a missions volunteer for life like Eva Nell Hunter,” he said.
Traveling the globe
Hunter has traveled across the United States and around the world on missions trips, setting up libraries for churches and training library workers. Her international trips have included Austria, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Brazil and Switzerland. She intended to go to Ivory Coast in West Africa in 2014 to set up a library for a seminary, but her doctor refused to give her the necessary inoculations because of her age.
Although she was unable to go to Ivory Coast, Hunter still found a way to help. “I had Googled several hundred book titles sent to me in French [the official language in Ivory Coast]. I translated them into English in order to classify them. A gift of a laptop and a computer program enabled me to place the books in the computer program — back into French. I sent everything over and someone went to assist with the library there.”
Since the 1980s she has dressed up as Lottie Moon at Christmas and Annie Armstrong at Easter and presented monologues in churches to support missions giving. She serves as 1 of 4 library specialists for LifeWay Christian Resources and hosts a library conference each year at Central Baptist, which draws people from all over the region. This year’s conference included participants from four states, 42 churches and five denominations.
To date, Hunter has served as a volunteer in Central Baptist’s library for 57 years and as volunteer director for 55 of those years. She said she was asked by the nominating committee to take the position for “one more year” for several years. Her answer was always the same: “I suppose I’ll have to because I’m not caught up.” After a few years, she said, “It was as if the Lord was speaking to me, saying, ‘Eva Nell, how long is it going to take before you know this is where I want you to be?’”
At Central Baptist, Hunter has developed a library with around 20,000 titles, rivaling that of many small town libraries. The church library is open to the public on weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and serves people from across the area, many of whom are homeschool teachers seeking wholesome reading materials and teaching supplies for their children.
She and her volunteer staff prepare all teaching and learning materials for the church’s missions trips. The staff also repair Bibles, prepare craft materials for Central Baptist’s Vacation Bible School and provide die-cut materials for other churches free of charge, sending out as many as 1,300 one year.
Mediagraphy
What’s next for this energetic 87-year-old? Hunter is working on a juvenile mediagraphy, similar to a bibliography, except it is not confined to books. She plans to continue her work of encouraging and assisting others in church libraries.
“This is my whole life. It is what has kept me going, especially after I lost my husband, Mark. I look forward to it every day.”
And a trip to Spain is tentatively planned for 2016.
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