Volume 10, Issue 6
August 2005
Inside This Issue:
NORTH CAROLINIANS GATHER IN GRAPEVINE, TX
August Directional Focus: Enriching Our Fellowship through Prayer AsYouGo Missions Affiliates
1
Upcoming Events
2
Don Horton, Moderator
2
Foster Family at Lighthouse
3
Belizean Music Conference NC News & Notes
3 4-5
Prayer Calender
5
Rick Jordan
6
Financial Report
6
Fall Youth Retreat
6
Larry Hovis
7
Over 200 North Carolinians attended the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s 15th annual General Assembly in Grapevine, Texas, June 30-July 1, 2005. A highlight of the Assembly was the commissioning of 19 new Global Missions field personnel, among whom were four from North Carolina: Mike and Fran Graham from Asheville, and Steve and Nancy James from Burnsville. These two couples were commissioned for CBF’s new category of missions service called AsYouGo. See the article below for their stories. AsYouGo Affiliate service offers a means for self-supporting personnel to serve through the CBF Global Missions field team structure. Whether through employment or through the direct support of churches, it also provides a Global Missions connection for CBF-minded people who have a specific mission calling to areas where CBF is not current sending career or Global Service Corps personnel. Please join us in supporting our AsYouGo Affiliates in five ways: prayer, providing other volunteers to help the Affiliate, spiritual care and support, financial support, and adminstrative support such as helping produce a newsletter, or perhaps helping set up an Affiliate’s non-profit status. For information on how you can become an AsYouGo missionary, contact Matt Norman at mnorman@thefellowship.info or call him 770-220-1609.
TWO NC COUPLES COMMISSIONED AS ASYOUGO MISSIONS AFFILIATES The CBF phrase, “World Without Borders” resonated right away in the hearts and minds of Steve and Nancy James (below), CBF’s new AsYouGo appointees to the little island of Haiti located in the Caribbean, not far from Cuba. Haiti was the first of the slave colonies to gain its freedom but was filled with disease and socioeconomic problems that were overwhelming and still exist today. Steve and Nancy received an official invitation from the Good Samaritan Hospital where they had served from 1983-1999 until government unrest forced them to leave. Due to the lack of medical assistance in most of the church-related clinics in Haiti, and to the often impoverished health of the Haitian people, the Jameses have received an invitation from the Haitian Baptist Convention to help in a medical assistance program to church-related clinics, including training Christian medical staff. Their Encourager Church, First Baptist Church in Burnsville, NC, and other partner churches will enable them to be the extension of the body of Christ to Haiti and her people. You’ve heard the expression, “Don’t quit your day job.” Well, Mike and Fran Graham (right), two of CBF’s newest AsYouGo
Affiliates, have taken the expression to heart. Even though Mike works full-time and Fran part-time, both have begun working with Slavic people groups who have immigrated to the Asheville area from 15 Eastern European countries. Fran had felt a deep calling to work with them, helping them integrate into American society. Mike was quickly drawn in to help his wife as well. Initially Fran and Mike worked on their own, but then they learned of the CBF’s Affiliate ministry, which provides training as well as local church contacts. First Baptist Church in Asheville is their Encourager Church. While Mike and Fran would eventually like for their ministry to become their “day job,” they are happy to have found a way to connect their mission with their church and their life.
If you would like to support these ministries, please call Jim Fowler at 888-822-1944 or contact the Affiliates directly: Steve and Nancy James: snjames8@yahoo.com Mike and Fran Graham: 828-299-7780 or feg116@charter.net