Texas Tidbits

Posted: 3/28/08

Texas Tidbits

Baylor Garland medical team serves in Honduras. Health care professionals from Baylor Medical Center in Garland recently served on a medical mission to Honduras, working with Mission Predisan. Physicians, nurses, pharmacists, translators, anesthesiologists, sterile processing technicians and others who made the trek donated their medical services. At a clinic in Catacamas, the operating room team performed 27 surgeries in three and a half days. Part of the mission team traveled to remote mountain clinics, where they treated 300 patients in three days, working by candlelight in facilities that lacked electricity and plumbing.

Gracewood benefits from matching grants. Children at Heart Ministries has received two matching grants to expand its Gracewood program for single mothers and their children. The Christ Is Our Salvation Foundation will match up to $220,000 for operating expenses related to Gracewood’s expansion, which includes the first residence on a new northwest Houston campus and the conversion of existing offices to a residence at its original campus in southwest Houston. The Leroy and Merle Weir Charitable Trust has made a $275,000 challenge grant toward construction of an additional residence on the northwest campus in Houston.

Baugh Foundation awards $250,000 to Howard Payne. The Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation of Houston will grant $250,000 to Howard Payne University to support its Paul and Jane Meyer Faith and Life Leadership Center. The center will utilize renovated space in the Phelps Bible Building, the chapel and Mims Auditorium. At the Baugh Foundation’s request, the facility’s multipurpose conference room will be named in honor of Richard and Wanda Jackson. Jackson is founder of the Jackson Center for Evangelism and Encouragement in Brownwood. The conference room will be a central component of the Paul and Jane Meyer Faith and Life Leadership Center, seating about 300 for lectures and 230 for banquets.

HPU Lady Jackets win national championship. Howard Payne University completed an undefeated season and captured its first NCAA Division III women’s basketball national championship by defeating Messiah (Pa.) College, 68-54. The Lady Jackets (33-0) became the first Division III national championship to go undefeated since Washington (Mo.) University in 2000. Howard Payne, which was appearing in the NCAA tournament for the fourth consecutive year, is the first team from the American Southwest Conference to win the national championship.

Lindsay wins book award. Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University and a member of West University Baptist Church in Houston, received one of the top honors from Christianity Today magazine in its annual CT Book Awards. Lindsay, who also is assistant director of the Center on Race, Religion and Urban Life, won the Christianity and culture category for Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. In addition, three Baylor University professors received award of merit honors in the competition. Roger Olson, professor of theology at Truett Theological Seminary, was recognized in the in the apologetics/evangelism category for Questions to All of Your Answers: A Journey from Folk Religion to Examined Faith. Thomas Kidd, associate professor of history, wrote The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America, which took the second-place honor in history/biography. Rodney Stark, university professor of the social sciences, was honored in theology/ethics for Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief.

Families endow Wayland scholarships. Three families recently have donated funds to create endowed student scholarships at Wayland Baptist University in memory or in honor of loved ones. The family and friends of Donna Sarchet, a former associate professor of business at Wayland who died in July 2005, created a scholarship in her memory. Sarchet served 22 years at the university. The family of Mauriene Smithson Matthews, a former Flying Queen who was a member of the WBU Athletic Hall of Honor, also established an endowed scholarship in her memory. Matthews, who died at age 74 in June 2007, taught school in Plainview 33 years before retiring in 1995. The family of Gerald Thompson created an endowed scholarship in his honor to mark his pending retirement in May. Thompson has been a science professor at Wayland since 1967.

WMU annual meeting slated. The Woman’s Missionary Union of Texas annual meeting is set for April 18-19 at Columbus Avenue Baptist Church in Waco. It will feature Jennifer Kennedy Dean, executive director of The Praying Life Foundation. For more information, visit www.wmutx.org.