Missionary loses ALS battle, dies at 43
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (BP) -- Mary Harper* didn't want to fight anymore. For months, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) had gradually robbed her body of muscle and strength. She resisted with exercise, dietary supplements and prayer.
Vietnam etched on Sam James’ heart
New believer risks marriage for Jesus
CENTRAL ASIA (BP) -- John Harper* had just blown it. The 
Missouri-born Southern Baptist missionary watched as a wave of anger washed over the face of his new friend, Rasheed,* whom he'd just told that Jesus wasn't a prophet (as the Quran describes), but God's Son -- a very offensive idea to most Muslims.
Hope found after ALS diagnosis
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (BP) -- Mary Harper's* eyes well with tears as she plucks rocks from the garden of her family's home near Springfield, Mo.
The 42-year-old slowly makes her way down a row marked "Spinach," using her left hand to toss dozens of stones into a trailer made from the bed of an old pickup. Her right arm hangs at her side, emaciated, its fingers slightly contorted -- the first victim of a disease that will likely take her life.
Three to five years, she said. That's the average doctors give most people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease. She fights back tears as she recalls the moment that she and her husband, John*, broke the news to their daughters and turned their family's world upside down. "Mom, I don't want you to die," Mary remembers her older daughter, Lindsey*, now 15, crying in her arms. Her younger daughter, Jessica*, now 13, also was in tears. John wondered how he'd raise two girls without his best friend. It wasn't supposed to be like this. More than a year ago, the Harpers were living half a world away, sharing Jesus in a spiritually dark corner of Central Asia. They'd spent the past seven years there serving as Southern Baptist representatives. It was an epic journey the small-town couple never imagined they'd take; especially for John, a self-described "hillbilly" whose happy place is either perched in a deer stand or waist deep in a river holding a fishing rod. Called to missions at 15, John said he surrendered to just about every missions field on the planet, "bawling his eyes out" whenever a missionary spoke in church. He met Mary after high school and they started dating, until John's calling almost ended their relationship. "God told me to go, and you can either come with me or not," he remembers telling Mary one night. "And then I turned around to walk away because it didn't seem like she was responding." Irritated but otherwise unfazed by John's pig-headed ultimatum, Mary grabbed his arm, spun him around and revealed something she'd never told anyone -- at 16, God also had spoken to her about missions. Listening to a missionary from China preach in church one Sunday morning, Mary clearly felt the Lord asking if she would be willing to go overseas one day. She was. "I gave her a little bitty, thin gold ring with a little grain of sand in there for a diamond," John said. "I was poor. I ate all my money." He proposed at Lambert's restaurant in Sikeston, Mo., home of the famous "throwed rolls." (Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like; waiters literally throw hot yeast rolls at customers.) It wasn't the most romantic gesture, but Mary was too down-to-earth to care about such things -- she simply wanted to obey God and follow wherever He led her husband-to-be. John was prepared to go just about anywhere, except to work with Muslims. He'd heard missionaries speaking about Muslim work and could "summarize all of their testimonies like this: We served for 30 years in such-and-such country, we were about to retire, and the day before we got on the plane somebody finally gave their heart to Christ." Incredulous, he added, "Dude, I'm not working 30 years to see one person come to faith."WEEK OF PRAYER: Hearing church reaches Deaf Malagasy
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar (BP) -- Mason Barrett sits wide-eyed in a tiny, crowded living room in Madagascar's capital city, trying desperately to understand what anyone around him is saying. Hands fly in a flurry of conversation, mostly get-to-know-you type questions: What's your name? Are you married? Were you born deaf? That last question might sound strange if this wasn't one of the thousands of Deaf communities that Barrett has come to serve. The real estate agent is part of a team from Warren Baptist Church in Augusta, Ga., that's traveled more than 9,000 miles for a single purpose: sharing Jesus with the Deaf Malagasy.
Philippine typhoon sparks global Baptist relief effort
RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Less than 24 hours after Typhoon Haiyan roared through the Philippines, Southern Baptist missionaries and disaster relief specialists were delivering aid to dozens of towns and villages devastated by the super storm. Their efforts are just part of a larger, global response to Haiyan by the international Baptist community that is multiplying Southern Baptists' impact. 
Baptists in Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Italy have already responded to the crisis or are pledging their support, as have numerous Filipino Baptist churches in the United States. Some are coordinating efforts through relief organizations such as Baptist Global Response (BGR), a key International Mission Board partner in disaster relief ministries, while others are channeling aid through Philippine churches. 
Images of destruction in places like Tacloban City bring back haunting memories for Joel Cuellar, evangelism and missions pastor at Tokyo Baptist Church. During the past two years, Tokyo Baptist has sent more than 300 of its members to serve in relief and rebuilding efforts following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that decimated parts of northeast Japan. "It's hard to accept the reality that thousands of people passed away in such a short time," said Cuellar, 47, a native Filipino who moved to Japan more than 20 years ago. "It's becoming more natural for us to respond with the love of God when calamity strikes, because we've learned from firsthand experience." When Cuellar heard the news about the extent of Haiyan's damage, he said he immediately began praying about how Tokyo Baptist Church might help. "Our purpose is to rebuild lives, both physically and spiritually, with the Gospel of Christ," he said. "It's based on the Great Commission and Matthew 25, when Jesus asked us to feed those who are hungry." Cuellar's congregation has given $5,000 to aid typhoon victims through BGR and plans to continue giving through a special offering to be collected during the next few weeks. "No one can see the pictures of the Philippines on TV and relate more directly than the people here who were in the tsunami," said Dennis Folds, Tokyo Baptist's senior pastor. "The devastation looks the same."
Folds emphasized that the typhoon is a reminder that Christians must work quickly to meet both the physical and spiritual needs of victims. "The urgency that we have right now to help the Philippines should remind us as believers to have a continual urgency to share the Gospel ... because we never know how an individual might be affected in a tragic event," he said. Though the majority of Tokyo Baptist's membership is Japanese, it is an international church with about 40 different nationalities represented. Among them are more than 100 active Filipinos including Raneil Ensomo, who is from a small village on the island of Leyte, where Tacloban City is located. Ensomo's parents told him that 60 percent of the homes in his hometown were destroyed; only 10 percent still have roofs. His parents are among the 10 percent, but their next-door neighbors weren't so lucky. "Everyone is focusing on Tacloban, and for a good reason, but the typhoon affected a very large area and I think there are lots of places that are not getting enough help," Ensomo said. Many outlying towns and villages, particularly in remote mountain areas, have yet to see any aid. "They don't know what to do; they don't have money to rebuild their houses," he said. That thought has kept other members of Tokyo Baptist's Filipino congregation awake at night. "I've been praying, I've been crying -- I can't even sleep, because I see all those people asking for help," said Karen Damian, who is thankful her family wasn't affected by the storm. The show of international support in Haiyan's wake has been encouraging, she added.
Church meets first believer among desert’s ‘Hidden People’
PRINCE GEORGE, Va. (BP) -- To say that Ellen Zaborsky is a fan of her church's adopted people group is a bit of an understatement.
Native Americans expand missions engagement
RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- As Native American Baptists are playing a greater role in sending missionaries to evangelize the world's native peoples, the International Mission Board is helping train those missionaries for maximum effectiveness.
IMB’s School of Prayer graduates inaugural class
RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- Thirty years ago, Scotty Tipper's prayers never got any higher than the top of his head. 
At the time, Tipper was a deacon at his church in south Georgia. He taught Sunday School, even served as the church's discipleship training director. There was just one problem: Tipper wasn't a Christian. "I knew I was lost," he said, "but I'd been in church my whole life." That truth ate away at Tipper's insides until he couldn't ignore the Holy Spirit any longer. During the invitation at church one Sunday morning, he stood up from the choir, walked down to his pastor in tears and told him that he needed Jesus. It was a life-changing moment, Tipper said. Today the retired educator is experiencing that same kind of spiritual transformation again -- this time in his prayer life. Tipper, now 63, was among 15 students who graduated from the inaugural class of the School of Prayer for All Nations (SPAN), July 29-Aug. 2, at the International Mission Board's missionary training facility near Richmond, Va. The class represented a wide cross-section of Southern Baptist life, drawing laypeople like Tipper, pastors and even former missionaries from states as far as Indiana and Texas. "Before I came here, I would say that I could pray with the best of 'em," Tipper said. "But now, I don't want to pray with the best of them, I want to pray the way that Jesus prayed. That's the transformation I'm talking about." It made such an impact that Tipper phoned his pastor to tell him that he would personally pay the pastor's SPAN registration fee if he would attend. "He said, 'Is it that good?' And I said, 'It will change your life.' ... Now the only reason he can't come is because he don't want to," Tipper added with a grin. For Ashley Allen, a 33-year-old women's missions and ministry director with the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, coming to SPAN was all about the numbers. "Over the last several years, the Lord has really burdened my heart for all these big numbers -- 258 million lost people in the U.S., 6 billion lost people in the world," Allen said, adding that there are an estimated 5.8 million lost people in her home state of North Carolina alone. "We sometimes forget that each number is attached to a soul -- people who are eternally separated from God, who, if they died today would be going to hell." Marty Sampson,* an associate pastor in Auburn, Ala., said he was drawn to SPAN out of deep, personal conviction that Southern Baptists have forgotten the importance of prayer. (He asked not to use his real name because he often travels to areas of the world that can be hostile to Christianity.)
Great Commission moment is now, IMB’s Elliff tells trustees
ROGERS, Ark. (BP) -- It's a question that both haunts and drives Tom Elliff, the kind that sometimes wakes him in the middle of night. But IMB's president won't answer it until he dies, stands before the judgment seat of Christ and hears it fall from the lips of his Savior: "What did you do with what I entrusted to you?" [QUOTE@left@180="There are over 7 billion people on this globe, and unless something changes drastically...."
-- Tom Elliff]Elliff posed that question to IMB trustees during their May 14-15 meeting in Rogers, Ar., saying it should be lodged in the mind of every Southern Baptist. Scripture clearly shows that God will hold every believer accountable for his or her response to the Great Commission, Elliff explained, telling trustees that the question has prompted him to issue an "urgent appeal" to all Southern Baptists to "carry the Gospel to the ends of the earth -- now." "There are over 7 billion people on this globe, and unless something changes drastically, radically, it is estimated that fewer than half will ever have the slightest connection with evangelical Christianity in their lifetime," Elliff said. "Why would God entrust to us the greatest lostness in all of history if He did not expect us to do something about it?" Elliff contrasted a time of unprecedented lostness with unprecedented access, resources and manpower willing to combat that lostness, such that "every lost person in this broken world should have a legitimate reason to believe that, if they can just hold on for a little bit, somebody is going to get to them with the truth." But he warned of "disturbing signs" that show Southern Baptists "may not be prepared to fulfill our part in the Great Commission equation." Elliff cited the continued five-year decline in missions giving through the Cooperative Program in spite of efforts to reverse the CP trend. Out of the $1.3 billion designated as "missions expenditures" in Southern Baptist churches in 2011, IMB received less than $92 million through CP, with another $146 million given through a relatively flat Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions. The declining support has impacted the number of Southern Baptist missionaries serving overseas under IMB appointment, dropping below 5,000 to 4,850 at the end of 2012. But the drop isn't for lack of qualified applicants, Elliff said, noting that many missionary candidates must be put on hold until a position becomes vacant or additional funding is secured. "In a generation that could literally fulfill the Great Commission by taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth, lack of missions support signals an impending retrenchment. That is unthinkable; in fact, it's unacceptable in light of the opportunity we have," Elliff said. "Winston Churchill made a statement about men, but I want to say it about the Southern Baptist Convention.... To every man there comes a moment in his lifetime for which he and he alone is uniquely gifted, uniquely qualified. What a tragedy it would be if that moment found him unwilling or unprepared for what would be his finest hour. "It's my conviction ... that all of us within the IMB family, as represented by you, our trustees, must be neither idle nor silent in this, our day of greatest opportunity." Trustees' resolution As a "first step" toward combating these problems, trustees overwhelmingly approved a resolution urging Southern Baptists to recognize and rally around the unique Great Commission opportunity which Elliff believes Christ has presented.
