Retired IMB missionary, Alabama Baptist dies

HUNTSVILLE — Alabama Baptist Benjamin Edgar Hope, retired International Mission Board missionary to Brazil for 33 years, died June 11. He was 79.

Hope graduated from Oklahoma Baptist University in Shawnee, Oklahoma. He earned a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, and served as a church planter in Cleveland, Ohio.

He and his wife, Berdie Lou, and their two children began missions work in Brazil in 1967. Hope served as pastor and interim pastor for multiple churches, taught at a local seminary and founded a new ministry for helping churches in crisis. The couple retired in 2000 and Hope served as a deacon at White Springs Baptist Church, Rainbow City. He was a member of Locust Grove Baptist Church, New Market, at the time of his death. 

Hope is survived by his wife, two children and two grandchildren.

(TAB)