New nets for fisherman celebrated on Thai island
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| Nets of love Oklahoma Baptist Messenger managing editor Bob Nigh (center) speaks to Klong Gam islanders Feb. 15 as an Oklahoma disaster relief team delivers 24 bags containing 10 shrimp nets to help replace nets lost in the Dec. 26 tsunami. Mark Caldwell of the Thai People’s Welfare Foundation (right) interprets. |
Residents of the small island just south of Krabi, Thailand, were visited by four Oklahoma disaster relief volunteers on Feb. 8 who helped members of Krabi Baptist Church deliver 40 small sacks of rice, cooking oil, fish sauce, tomato sauce, fruit juice, fresh garlic, onions and cashew nuts capable of feeding about a fifth of the island’s families for a few days.
One week later, the entire nine-man Oklahoma team helped deliver 240 shrimp nets to 24 families, a gift from Oklahoma Baptists that not only will help feed those families indefinitely but also help them earn a living. The nets, which cost about $10 each, were the first of many which will be presented to the islanders in the days ahead, thanks to a $25,000 gift wired to the Krabi church by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma’s disaster relief office and provided by Oklahoma Baptists following the Dec. 26 tsunami that devastated southern Asia.
Once-idyllic island receives volunteers’ labors & compassion
KOH PHI PHI, Thailand (BP)--The damage to the once-gorgeous island of Koh Phi Phi is immediately evident when one steps onto the pier after taking a 75-minute ferry ride from Krabi, Thailand, some 25 miles to the north.
Post-tsunami medical team opens doors for meeting needs
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| Death & life In a land where body bags continue to be an everyday sight, the many needs of tsunami victims in Indonesia are a key focus of Southern Baptist volunteers. |
Disaster relief director Sam Porter of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma led a team of a dozen volunteers with medical experience to this once-beautiful tip of land that juts out into the Indian Ocean. Once a tropical paradise, Banda Aceh’s post-tsunami landscape resembles an area left behind after a scorched-earth military campaign. The monsoon rains which are now falling may soon help clear the landscape of debris, but the tears of the Indonesian people will take months -- perhaps years, perhaps forever -- to help wash away the pain in their broken hearts.
Christians should ‘wake up, clean up,’ Okla. exec says
DEL CITY, Okla. (BP)--Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma Executive Director-Treasurer Anthony Jordan thanked Oklahoma Baptists for “being a people of unity” Nov. 15 in his annual address to state convention messengers, while at the same time vigorously challenging the church to “wake up, clean up, dress up and light up.”
Sole membership motions fall short of request, but show intent
NEW ORLEANS (BP)--Trustees of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary approved two motions concerning sole membership during their Oct. 13 meeting. The actions fall short of the request made by Southern Baptist Convention messengers in June 2004 that the seminary adopt sole membership at their "October, 2004, meeting" by amending the seminary's charter. But the language indicates that sole membership will be adopted and that seminary President Chuck Kelley will restate polity and legal concerns to messengers attending the 2005 annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
Centenarian not slowing down; still teaches Sunday School
OKLAHOMA CITY (BP)--Myrtle Sheets has been a teacher virtually all her life. In fact, she started out as an "instructor" as a fourth-grader when she helped her first teacher -- Mary Dunn -- teach fellow students in a one-room schoolhouse in Lindsay, Okla.
With permission slips, high school students attend ‘Passion’
ARDMORE, Okla. (BP)--With permission slips from their parents, more than 500 high school students in the Ardmore, Okla., area viewed “The Passion of The Christ.”
Okla. Baptists affirm CP, challenge ‘New Tolerance’
OKLAHOMA CITY (BP)--Affirming the cooperation of the past and looking to the challenges of the future, messengers to the 98th annual meeting of the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma passed resolutions endorsing the Cooperative Program and opposing a "New Tolerance" worldview.
Chaplains counseled, thanked as they reconvene in New York
NEW YORK (BP)--For most of them, their first trip to this metropolis was in response to the worst terrorist attack ever inflicted upon the United States. At the time, they ministered to those victimized by the destruction of the World Trade Center's twin towers and surrounding buildings and to rescue and recovery workers who responded to the tragedy.
Elliff: Kingdom Families conferences can help stir America toward awakening
DEL CITY, Okla. (BP)--"God is looking for people who will just give themselves to be a Kingdom Family.... He is looking for people who will say, 'Yes, that's important to me.' If you don't embrace this, it isn't going to happen in your church."
That was the challenge issued by Tom Elliff, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Del City, Okla., and chairman of the Southern Baptist Convention's Council on Family Life, to 218 participants at the first "Kingdom Families: Come Home to The Heart of God Conference" at the Oklahoma City-area church Aug. 11-12.
| Tom Elliff |
