The Find Marilane search needs the help of churches in northwest and central Alabama, northeast Mississippi and southwest Tennessee.
“We are so blessed to be part of a network like the SBC,” said Adam Carter, pastor of Leawood Baptist Church in Leawood, Kansas, and husband of the missing 36-year-old Marilane Carter.
Church members and leaders of Leawood “have been so awesome,” Carter said late afternoon Aug. 9 in Birmingham. “They love her and want her home,” he said, noting they told him, ‘You go find her and do what you’ve got to do. We’ll take care of things here.'”
Husband searching in Birmingham
He came to Birmingham on Aug. 9 in hopes Marilane will make her way to UAB or to where her parents stay when they are in town to visit children and grandchildren. Marilane’s parents, Donald and Marlene Mesler, live in Fairhope and are members of First Baptist Church, Fairhope.
Adam said he is blessed to have such a good relationship with his in-laws. “We are all just leaning on each other.
“It’s been hard,” he said, noting he and all the family are living minute to minute and that he drives around UAB every few hours hoping to see her. “I’ve been telling myself this week, ‘Come on Adam, just wake up.’ It’s a nightmare. That’s the only way I can describe it.”
The Carters’ 2-year-old daughter turns 3 a week from tomorrow (on Aug. 17), and Adam hopes Marilane will be at the birthday party. They also have two boys, 4 and 7. The children are being cared for by another family member right now.
“They miss their mom,” he said. “I want to be with my wife, and I want my kids to be with their mom.”
Missing since Sunday, Aug. 2
Marilane, a 2008 graduate of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, has been missing almost exactly one week.
Leaving her home near Kansas City a little after 8 p.m. Aug. 1 to reportedly seek psychiatric care from UAB hospital where she once served as a pastoral chaplain, Marilane was last heard from the evening of Aug. 2. Adam said he talked to her at 7:45 p.m. and she sounded a little confused but she noted she was about to cross the I-55 bridge over into Tennessee.
“We’ve made that trip so many times, she’s got to know the route,” he said.
Referencing the fact that she left so late to drive through the night to Birmingham, Adam said, “I have beat myself up over that. If I could have somehow kept her home, maybe I could have kept her safe, but she had been having a hard time sleeping and said she might as well drive on down to Birmingham.”
Help with the search
Marilane is 5′ 8″, 130 lbs, brown hair, green eyes and was driving a 2011 dark gray GMC Acadia with a Kansas tag — 194LFY.
Please call 205-390-1003 if you have any information or 911 if she is found.
Updates as well as a downloadable poster (posted below) are available on the Find Marilane Facebook page.
“If there are churches and other groups willing to pass out flyers and help look for her, I would really appreciate it,” Adam said.
—Jennifer Davis Rash, The Alabama Baptist
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