American college towns have traditionally served as modern day port of calls for international students, and Auburn is no exception.
For the past 10 years, Lakeview Baptist Church, led by pastor Al Jackson, has consistently risen to the challenge of ministering to this growing demographic, comprised mainly of Chinese.
And though you’d hardly be able to tell by talking with her, Lakeview member Dot Mullins had a hand — “or maybe just a pinky,” as she says — in most of it.
In 1993, the Auburn Tigers went undefeated in football. Though she enjoys the enthusiasm of her “orange-haired and blue-eyed” grandson, Dot Mullins moved to “the loveliest village on the ‘Plains’” that year, not out of devotion to the football team but to God.
In 1993, Mullins returned to her home in Andalusia from four and a half months of teaching English in Indonesia, her third missions trip abroad within just a few years.
With her husband L.C. recently deceased, and her son, Alan, fighting a fierce battle against diabetes, she said she began feeling a “strong sense of restlessness.”
Though a member of First Baptist, Andalusia for 40 years, “I realized that my ties in Andalusia were loosened,” she said. “One morning as I walked, God just spoke to my heart and said ‘just move to Auburn,’ and the next thought was that there was nothing to hold me in Andalusia.”
As if a divine command wasn’t enough, Dot’s daughter also lived in Lee County, and made the path straight for the work the Lord was soon to be doing — she built her mom a house.
Beyond providing shelter, the house Evelyn Brown built proved integral to her mother’s purpose in moving, though neither realized it at the time. “Coming to Auburn, I had a strong feeling God had a purpose for me. At first I thought it might be teaching women at the jail,” Mullins said.
But after joining the growing congregation at Auburn’s Lakeview Baptist, she was plugged into their impressively active Internationals ministry and immediately felt at home.
On any given night of the week, Mullins’ residence resembles an international youth hostel rather than the empty nest of a 74-year-old retiree.
God in many languages
Three different languages can be heard wafting through the rooms with the Word of God in every heart, if not exactly understandable to American ears.
In addition to the Venezuelan couple she hosts, Mullins uses her kitchen as a classroom for teaching the Bible to Chinese students six times a week. “Yeah, it gets pretty busy around here,” she laughs.
Supplementing the house classes and the regular church meetings, “we have a covered dish dinner on the last Friday of the month. If you want some real Chinese foods, you get it there.”
The lessons at her home naturally assume a more personal and intimate tone than the classes Mullins assists with at church.
Initially, she utilized textbook-styled lesson plans to present the gospel until asked by a student if she would teach him the Bible.
“I took out my lesson,” she recalls, “and he instantly said, ‘no, I don’t want to know what that paper says, I want to know what the Bible says. Can you teach it to me?’”
The frankness of that request forever changed her teaching style.
“They’re all good books,” she emphasizes, “but since then I’d say 95 percent of my teaching has been verse by verse.
“I sometimes have to admit I’m not sure what something means, but the students seem to like it better that way,” she said. “These people are starving for God’s word, and a lot of the studies we had been using would often start in Genesis and it might take five months before they heard about Jesus. A lot of them are professors and visiting scholars, but they don’t know Jesus, so they’re lacking.”
While Paul admonishes Timothy to disregard doubts regarding his effectiveness as a minister due to his youth, Mullins, now 74, appreciates the sense of purpose that serving God as a senior brings to her life.
“I thank Him everyday,” she says. “He promised that you can still bear fruit in old age, and I am eternally grateful that He’s given me a purpose for living instead of playing cards with somebody all day. Or with myself,” she laughs.
“Lakeview’s internationals ministry has grown and grown. Our Sunday School class started out with 14, now we’ve hit 111. We want it to go wherever God wants to take it.”
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