Mission testimonies highlight TBM rally

Posted: 11/17/06

Mission testimonies highlight TBM rally

By Craig Bird

Baptist Child & Family Services

DALLAS—A new partnership between Texas Baptist Men and Walking In Love Ministries is revitalizing the outreach of three Baptist hospitals in Nigeria, participants at the Texas Baptist Men’s rally learned.

Six mission reports highlighted the rally, held prior to the Baptist General Convention of Texas annual meeting in Dallas.

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“We are already getting reports of the revivals that are starting as the hospitals begin to return to caring for the spiritual and medical needs of their areas,” said Mary Kay Posey, who was an infant in 1945 when her missionary parents began the clinic that became Eku Baptist Hospital in southeastern Nigeria.

Participants worship at the Texas Baptist Men rally.

Growing up, she saw hundreds of professions of faith in Christ every week as the hospital earned a widespread reputation that even attracted patients from other countries.

But the Southern Baptist Convention International Mission Board shifted its funding and personnel from institutions to church planting in 2000, leaving the Nigerian Baptist Convention unable to hire personnel or fund operations at the same level.

Responding to the plea of her Nigerian friends to not “let the hospital die,” Posey and her husband, Fred, began collecting medical supplies and funds. Since 2005, they have made six trips “carrying 20-plus suitcases.”

Three months ago, they linked up with Texas Baptist Men and now are helping pack two containers of equipment. Additionally, an endowment established with the IMB and designated for support of Baptist hospitals in Nigeria is being transferred to the Texas Baptist Men Foundation.

The Poseys recently returned from a six-week stay at Eku and the other two hospitals with plans to expand the work to include building projects at the seminary in Eku as well as a leper’s colony and a just-being-organized orphanage.

Other testimonies described:

• How a prisoner became a Christian after reading a copy of The Purpose Driven Life, given to him by another prisoner who had received it from a TBM criminal justice ministry volunteer.

• How the owner of a motel and a never-been-used RV park in Cross Plains “who had never given anyone anything for free” refused to give a reduced rate to the TBM crews who came to town to build houses for victims of the wildfires. “You can use it for free,” he instead told the builders.

• Eating termites while building a church “that seats 1,000 but only needs six parking places because the members are so poor.”

• How a man, after passing by a site where TBM was building a church in Bellville for several days, called the pastor at 1:30 a.m. and had him come over to his house, “because if loving Jesus will make those folks work that hard for free, there must be something to this religion thing.”