Seventy people attended the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of Missouri state meeting during the CBF General Assembly in Tampa, Fla., June 23.
Coordinator Harold Phillips led the meeting, which featured updates on a variety of missions and ministry opportunities.
Together for Hope West Coordinator Chris Thompson of Liberty noted the 10th anniversary of CBF's "Together for Hope" emphasis among the 20 poorest U.S. counties.
Laura Hoffman, a member of Third Baptist Church, St. Louis, gave a brief update on the work of the 2012 CBF Task Force, on which she serves.
Josh Arnone (right) shares about the upcoming Missouri River 340 canoe race in which he and Jason Nazario (center) will participate to raise funds to drill wells in Ethiopia. The team's coordinator, Nick Foster, looks on. (Photo by Bill Webb)
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Attendees also heard an update on the Big Muddy/Clean Water initiative to raise funds to build wells in Ethiopia.
Josh Arnone and Jason Nazario plan to participate in the Missouri River 340, pitting canoe teams against each other in a Missouri River race originally set for Missouri. Due to flooding conditions, the event will take place on the Kansas River, beginning in Manhattan, Kan., on July 19 and ending in Lawrence, Kan.
John and Tanya Parks, commissioned as Global Missions field personnel at the Tampa meeting, told about their ministry to the Roma — or Gypsy — people of Slovakia.
Also present were Ralph and Tammy Stocks, who minister to the Roma in Bucharest, Romania. They appealed for volunteer teachers to help train Roma bivocational pastors.
Jeff Langford, CBFMO associate coordinator, described how chaplain and disaster responder Bob Barker, who recently retired to Republic, had providentially become coordinator of CBF volunteers assisting Joplin in the aftermath of a May 22 tornado. CBFers Carl and Elizabeth Haney of First Baptist Church of Lexington provided a motor home for Barker to use.
Among the stream of volunteers to Joplin was Angela Lowe, a chaplain at Lawrence Memorial Hospital in Lawrence, Kan., who described spending a Saturday at Freeman Medical Center in Joplin ministering to victims in the aftermath of the storm.
Lowe described "a series of events led by the Spirit" as she told of two cousins who rescued a man from his home and dropped him off in Freeman as a John Doe, an unidentified survivor. Prayers by the hospital staff for family members to come forward and identify the man were answered after a sister-in-law learned the hospital had one remaining John Doe.
Medical personnel were in tears when they saw their prayers for their patient had been answered, she said.
