When Mondene Coker was trying to get a job after business school, people kept turning her down, saying, “You’re 19 — you’re young, you’ll leave.”
They were wrong.
Once her Sunday School teacher — a switchboard operator at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions — put in a good word for Coker and she got a job there, she never left.
She recently celebrated her 50th anniversary at the SBOM.
Coker said it’s just been day after day of “doing what you’re supposed to be doing, doing what you’re assigned and seeing that through.”
Over time, that added up to a half century. She’s served in a variety of different roles, from the then-church training office to helping with Royal Ambassadors and men’s ministry.
‘Walking encyclopedia’
“It’s been good people to work with and work for, and I’ve enjoyed what I get to do for the people who are involved in our ministries,” said Coker, who currently serves as the ministry assistant for Disaster Relief in the office of global missions.
Scotty Goldman, director of that office, said she’s a “walking encyclopedia” and the resident historian of the SBOM.
“Anytime we want to know about who did this or who was responsible for this, she’s just a walking history book,” he said. “She’s forgotten more about Disaster Relief than I’ll ever know.”
Goldman said Coker is “one of the hardest workers.”
“She is always committed to working, and she’s got a routine and she’s on task and gets it done,” he said. “She never acts like she’s behind; she’s always just steady. She’s like the hub of the office, the center of everything.”
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