Muscle Shoals Association team builds shower facilities to ready Arizona church for missions

From the upper desert terrain framing the group’s get-together, it was easy to tell this wasn’t a typical Lawrence County reunion. 
   
In October, a missions team composed of seven Baptists from Lawrence and Winston counties ventured 1,500 miles west to Many Farms, Ariz., to assist two of their own, Tom and Gail Campbell of Old Town Creek Baptist Church, Moulton, in Muscle Shoals Baptist Association.
   
The Campbells are 11 months into a two-year commitment to lead Many Farms Baptist Church as part of the Service Missions Corps, a volunteer group of missionaries willing to spend two years without pay serving churches. 
   
George Whitten, director of missions (DOM) for Muscle Shoals Association, said the idea for the trip was born before the Campbells ever left home. 
   
“When he left, I made a commitment to pray for him and a commitment that I would go visit him and help in any way I could,” Whitten said. “When we talked after he got there, he said a major hindrance to hosting missions teams was that there was nowhere for them to take a bath. 
   
“They had one shower and one week, they had 20 people there. So we decided to build them some showers.” 
   
During the trip, Oct. 15–22, the team worked three and a half days out of eight, traveling the rest of the time. 
   
Joining Whitten from Muscle Shoals Association were Richard Hill and Stanley Crowe. From Winston County came O.D. Prestridge, David Miller, Bubba Pigg and Winston County Sheriff Ed Townsend. 
   
“I just didn’t think they would actually get to come,” Tom Campbell said. “It’s four days of hard driving, and we’re out here by ourselves.”
   
He said Many Farms Baptist is part of Four Corners Baptist Association and is located in the middle of the Navajo Nation in the upper desert of Arizona. The church is more than 100 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart and the home of the DOM. 
   
Whitten’s group brought the materials for the project with them in the association’s van. 
   
All the building materials — including the fiberglass shower stalls — were donated by local church members. 
   
The group camped out in Sunday School rooms and showered in the pastorium while completing the project. 
   
“The hard part was we were really cramped, with seven men working at the same time in a small Sunday School room,” Whitten said. “We tore out the one old bathroom they had, divided the room into ladies’ and men’s facilities and built two new showers and sinks.” 
   
He said the group held a church service when they arrived and the Campbells were emotional about seeing home folks. 
   
“It’s one thing to get people coming to help from California or New York,” Whitten said. “But when your people come, it means something. It makes it personal. They cried when we left, and seeing how much it meant to them made the trip worth it.” 
   
The Campbells are no strangers to missions work. Since he retired recently from the 3M plant in Decatur, the couple also spent a year working in a North Dakota church. 
   
“We had been home about 18 months from that work, and we just weren’t at peace sitting at home,” Campbell said. “We wanted to do something else.” 
   
When they arrived at Many Farms, he said the church services usually consisted of him, his wife and one Navajo woman. 
   
But two weeks ago, Campbell said 21 Navajos attended Sunday worship. 
   
And the new showers have already been put to good use by other missions groups, he said, and seeing the new facilities always reminds him of the visit from his neighbors. 
   
“It was really an encouragement to have people from home come help us,” he said. “It was a big sacrifice on their part. It’s hard to believe they would do it.” 
   
Campbell said he and Four Corners Association have plans for the church. 
   
They hope to build a dormitory-type facility there so that other groups can stay and work at the church. 
   
But for now, there will always be a little bit of home at Many Farms.