Two North American missionary couples with ties to Alabama have added support from the North American Mission Board (NAMB) to their resources for being on the mission field.
Raymond E. “Ed” and Linda W. Ables serve in Guntersville, where Ed Ables works to start Hispanic churches in 11 local associations through the North Alabama Baptist Hispanic Coalition.
Ables, who considers Fort Payne home, is a graduate of Samford University, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in religion and history, respectively, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he received the M.Div. degree.
He served nine years as pastor of Enon Baptist Church in Montevallo and prior to that served 25 years as a Southern Baptist missionary in Ecuador.
Linda Ables, a native of Kansas, is a graduate of Samford University and the University of Alabama, where she received a master’s degree in Spanish. She has been a language missions coordinator and Spanish instructor at Samford University since 1993, and earlier served with her husband as a missionary in Ecuador.
David H. and Deborah H. Williams serve in Henrietta, N.Y., where David Williams is church planting strategist for the Finger Lakes Baptist Association based in Rochester.
Williams, who grew up in Mobile, is a graduate of Samford University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He served as a church planting contract worker with the Florida Baptist Convention, and was pastor for nearly 10 years of Grand Island (Fla.) Baptist Church.
He also previously served as pastor of First Baptist Church in Blountstown, Fla., and associate pastor of churches in Florida and Georgia.
He also has ministry experience as a Baptist Student Ministries director, a US-2 missionary at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., summer missionary in Lake Tahoe, Calif., and youth minister in Birmingham.
Deborah Williams, who grew up in Wabash, Ind., is a graduate of Ball State University, Georgia Southern University, the Psychological Studies Institute in Atlanta and Georgia State University, where she received a master’s degree in community counseling.
She has been a Christian counselor since 1989, and has earlier experience as a schoolteacher, child care assistant and church youth director.
The Williamses have two children: Paul, 14, and Joel, 12. (NAMB)
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