Ashley Reagan will never forget her first international missions trip, how the people in Zambia stood on the side of the road saying, “Come; tell us.”
Reagan also won’t forget how 15 people from a church in north Alabama with an average attendance of 65 and an annual budget of only $115,000 raised $45,000 so they could tell those people a world away about a God who loves and forgives sinners. And she won’t forget how “the fish were jumping in the boat” and 2,555 men and women professed their faith in Jesus Christ during two weeks in June.
“It gave me a burden that cannot be forgotten,” said the 26-year-old college student from Lakeview Baptist Church, Southside, in Etowah Baptist Association. “I already felt a leading to go to foreign missions and this confirmed it.”
It was a mountaintop experience for her that began a few years earlier in the valley of disappointment for Lakeview Baptist’s pastor, Jason Hill.
It was one of the lowest points in Hill’s life. His heart was on the missions field in Zambia, where he and his wife, Kelley, had served for four years.
But he was in a Baptist church, working part time doing various tasks and serving as a janitor. The couple had been unable to return overseas following a yearlong furlough because of concerns about her health.
“We thought we were going to be overseas for the rest of our lives until we retired,” he recalled. “There were days I would go into a room and just cry.”
Hill added, “I thought God wanted me to go overseas and be a missionary, and yet I was cleaning toilets.”
But Lakeview needed a pastor, particularly one who could mentor young church members who already felt a pull toward careers in ministry and missions. In 2006, Hill stepped into the pulpit.
That was just the starting point as 15 members, ranging in age from 17 to mid-70s — some of whom had never flown before — committed to go overseas. Their search for the right project led them to Southern Baptist representatives Daniel and Grace Kim — and to Zambia. The Kims had an ambitious goal to reach 3,000 people through door-to-door evangelism.
First the team had to raise the funds — $3,000 per person — to make the trip.
“We were amazed by how God provided the funds for our team,” Hill said. “In February, we started with $1,000. By May 20, we had raised all the money.”
Fund raising was done in a variety of ways. Some people painted and cleaned yards around Gadsden. Others wrote letters asking for support from friends and family. The largest amount was raised through collecting and selling scrap metal.
Other churches in Etowah Association jumped in, donating money and helping with transportation.
Once in Zambia, the team focused on door-to-door evangelism with “intentional, broad seed sowing,” the Kims wrote in an e-mail reflecting on the work of the Lakeview group. The team and three local Baptist church partners used the three- to five-minute “Roman Road” gospel presentation.
“The special result was that we shared the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ to almost every person who lived in those areas we worked with,” the Kims wrote.
Danny Bussey, chairman of the Lakeview missions team, called the trip life-changing.
“I was expecting it to be harder to share there. It ended up being easier. Once people realized we were in the community, they would be standing at the edge of the trail and waiting for us to come by,” he said.
His twin daughters were part of the team as well. Brooke Bussey, 17, said the trip was a confirmation of her call to the missions field and a challenge to share her faith more readily at home.
“I did a lot of things I didn’t think I’d ever do,” she said. “I learned that I’m a lot bolder than I thought I was.”
And that’s something that applies to church members in general, as Danny Bussey said they are bolder about sharing their faith as a result of the missions experience.
That’s something their pastor noticed as well.
“They are stepping into the next level of a relationship with God as far as being a disciple,” Hill explained.
“That’s a pastor’s dream — to have church members be excited about missions and be bolder in their witness here.”
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