Hundreds in Alabama pair missions with camping

Camping means different things to different people, but for some, camping is synonymous with missions. 
   
Alabama Campers on Mission (COM) is made up of 265 couples who have discovered the natural partnership of camping and missions. 
   
“Campers on Mission are most of the time individuals or couples who have a motor home or travel trailer,” said Steve Stephens, an associate in the office of men’s ministries with the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions. 
   
According to Stephens, National Campers on Mission was organized in 1971 through the cooperation of the Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board) and the church recreation department of the Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources). The adult volunteer mobilization unit of NAMB now sponsors COM.
   
He said COM participants are “ready to travel to places where they can fellowship with other Christian campers and do missions work.”
   
One Alabama camper is Wilton Whigham of Huntsville. After retiring in 1989, Whigham started his own home-repair business. A couple of years later, he discovered a COM rally in Guntersville and signed up to participate. 
   
“Campers on Mission took over my time. It was such a blessing,” Whigham said. He closed his business and now he and his wife, Kathy, spend about six months a year on various COM projects. 
   
The first Alabama COM project of 2006 began in early January with campers constructing a worship building for Mount Carmel Baptist Church, Lake City, Fla. 
   
When the Alabama campers leave the area March 3, Whigham, who is leading the project, expects the 350-seat sanctuary to be well underway. 
   
Campers in Alabama COM love the opportunity to visit places they wouldn’t normally visit, but their overwhelming motivation is simply the opportunity to do missions. 
   
Glenn and Jeanette Whiddon of Dothan became involved in missions work long before retirement by participating in annual trips to Navajo reservations in New Mexico. 
   
Jeanette Whiddon said she and her husband discovered COM on a recreational camping trip and signed up for a project. Their desire to do more volunteer projects led them to take early retirement.
   
Often COM members build ongoing relationships with churches, schools and other facilities, such as Shocco Springs Baptist Conference Center in Talladega, and work with those organizations on a regular basis.
   
Jake Carrol of Equality, who is also on-site at the Lake City project with his wife, Velma, said he looks forward to his annual COM trip to Oneida Baptist Institute in Kentucky. The institute is a Christian boarding school that contains a working farm. This will be the 11th year the Carrols have worked at Oneida. 
   
At all the different venues, COM offers the unique opportunity to feel “at home” while actually relocating to a missions project. 
   
State COM President Don Standridge recalled participating in construction projects each summer while working as a school coach and principal and sleeping on hard floors. 
   
Using one’s own camper or motor home makes the long trips much more comfortable. Since retiring in 1986, Standridge and his wife, Billie Ann, participate in COM projects year-round, taking as many as eight monthlong trips a year.
   
The Standridges have worked in many areas, but a favorite project is Clear Creek Baptist Bible College in Pineville, Ky. “The college was begun to teach mountain preachers how to read the Bible. The area is economically depressed but naturally beautiful,” he said. 
   
The Alabama COM has partnered with Clear Creek for several construction/renovation projects and hopes to do so again this summer.
   
While husbands are hanging Sheetrock, building and painting, the wives stay busy with their own missions projects. Kathy Whigham has a puppet ministry. In Lake City, she has been entertaining at several area nursing homes. 
   
The women of Alabama COM are also involved in an ongoing sewing ministry for international missions. 
   
Jeanette Whiddon enjoys sewing children’s clothing to send with her daughter who frequently does medical missions in Nicaragua. Whiddon described COM as “a calling.” 
   
“We love it because we love to camp, and we love the fellowship we build with other members. Because we spend a lot of time away from our home churches, our camping family becomes our extended church family,” she said.
   
Although the majority of COM projects involve construction or disaster relief, some campers are ministering to thousands of people in Talladega twice a year through Alabama Raceway Ministries. 
   
Jenny Ellison of Trussville joins NASCAR fans each spring and fall in the north campground of Talladega Superspeedway. The area covers about 200 acres. 
   
Before the event, Ellison helps solicit donations of water and food from churches to be distributed. 
   
“I love doing it,” she said. “Last fall, we had the privilege of seeing two people saved in the worship service at the track. Some say Jesus wouldn’t be at this kind of place (the racetrack), but I believe that’s exactly where He’d be ministering.”
   
More information can be found online at www.namb.net/vols and www.alabamacom.org.