Baptist Message Staff

WOODWORTH, La. (BP) -- Friends and family from around the nation paid tribute to David Hankins, the Louisiana Baptist Convention's outgoing executive director, during a retirement dinner Thursday, April 11. "Our hearts are full of gratitude -- gratitude to God for the blessings of this life," Hankins told the crowd gathered at the state convention's Tall Timbers Baptist Conference Center in Woodworth. "I would be the most ungrateful person in the earth to have one complaint or one gripe about what has happened in my existence. God is so good -- a great expression of that is you all.

GRAMBLING, La. (BP) -- An early morning shooting Wednesday (Oct. 25) at Grambling State University -- that left two men dead, one of whom was a student at the school -- has prompted a call for prayer from Louisiana Baptist Convention Executive Director David Hankins. "The brokenness of our world sadly continues to be on display, as we learned from the shooting on the Grambling campus," Hankins told the Baptist Message. "Our hearts are grieved for the families of the victims.

DENHAM SPRINGS, La. (BP) -- After hearing his pastor share about the need for ministry for Hurricane Harvey victims in early September, Mickey Watson felt led to form a team with other members of Amite Baptist Church. For several weeks, teams from the Louisiana church in Denham Springs traveled to Texas, cooking meals, gutting homes and delivering supplies, like many other Southern Baptist churches and teams from around the country. Volunteers from Amite spent two days working on homes in Beaumont, Texas.