CBF Heartland made its annual Circle of Giving presentation of a check for $5,000 during its “state” meting at the CBF General Assembly in Atlanta on June 26.
Tammy Stocks, CBF field personnel serving the Romany in Romania with her husband Ralph, accepts a facsimile of a $5,000 Circle of Giving check on behalf of colleagues Shane and Diane McNary, field personnel among the Romany in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, from CBF Heartland. At left is CBF Heartland Treasurer Charles Cantrell; at right, CBF Heartland Coordinator Harold Phillips. (Bill Webb photo)
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The recipient is the Samuel Project of CBF field personnel Shane and Diane McNary, who minister among the Romany people in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.
The Circle of Giving allows CBFers in the Heartland to make gifts of $50 each to total $5,000. Each giver has a vote to determine which missions cause receives the Circle of Giving check for the year.
The Samuel Project is an effort to provide preschool for Roma children to help them prepare for public school and do well, Phillips explained.
A local group in Vazec is buying and rehabbing a house that will provide preschool classrooms, a hygiene area with washer and dryer, and an office area for the ministry, Jekh Brom, which is translated “One Way.”
The McNarys were not able to be present to receive the award, so Tammy Stocks, who with her husband Ralph also works with the Romany but in Bucharest, Romania, accepted the gift on the McNarys’ behalf from CBF Heartland Coordinator Harold Phillips and Treasurer Charles Cantrell.
Stocks made a presentation about the work she and her husband do among the Romany, where they have served for the past three years after moving from their mission location in Uruguay. Soon they will have served as CBF field personnel for 20 years, she told the Heartland group.
Among their ministries are two to reach out to assist women — the Ruth Project and the Naomi Center for Women, she explained. She told the CBFers the couple is searching for a quilting team who might come to the field and help teach the women how to quilt.
Phillips also reminded CBFers the regional organization is filling slots at the Gypsy Smith School for local pastors that is offered every January and has been for several years.
Sasha Zivanov, who with his wife Mira minister in St. Louis among refugees of the former Yugoslavia, told of the ministry’s upcoming move to a new location with the support of friends.
The former Yugoslavia now includes refugees from Bosnia, Slovenia and Croatia.
Among other speakers were Brian Ford, pastor, Little Bonne Femme Baptist Church near Columbia, Mo., on Missouri Faith Voices; Gary Dollar, a member of the CBF Governance Board, on a Roma Road partnership trip; and national CBF’s Harry Rowland, on CBF’s “Dawnings.”
