Baptist Message & BP Staff

RUSTON, La. (BP) -- Karl Malone, the NBA legend known as "The Mailman," made a delivery to the Baptist Collegiate Ministry at Louisiana Tech. Aboard his multi-ton CAT Excavator, Malone lifted a stately oak tree that crashed into the BCM's chapel in an EF3 tornado that left Ruston, La., with widespread damage April 25 around 1:50 a.m.

BATON ROUGE, La. (BP) -- Longtime Louisiana pastor Bob Anderson, a former first vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention, died Dec. 13 after a seven-year battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 84. Anderson led Parkview Baptist Church in Baton Rouge from 1974 until his retirement in 1996, growing the congregation to 5,000 members. He founded Parkview Baptist School in 1981, now one of Louisiana's largest private schools with 1,200 students from pre-kindergarten to high school. Don Mayes, Parkview's superintendent since 2013, is one of Parkview's alumni from the 1980s and the father of a high school senior there.

ALBANY, La. (BP) -- Floodwater stopped two feet short of the church building where Bethlehem Baptist was sheltering 350 survivors of the onslaught of south Louisiana's flooding. The reprieve gave student minister Jase Shawley a chance to deliver a Sunday sermon, the day after the survivors' sudden evacuation Aug. 13 -- a reprieve that affected eternity for some of the evacuees.

DENHAM SPRINGS, La. (BP) -- A church van apparently caused a stir in one flood-ravaged town in south Louisiana. A 12-person team traveled to hard-hit Denham Springs on Saturday, Aug. 20. The disaster relief volunteers -- from Longview Baptist Church in Deville, 120 miles to the northwest -- were only able to mud-out a couple of houses. The next week, however, Longview's phone lit up.