Lottie Moon Week of Prayer 2014

NORTH GARLAND, Texas (BP) -- Tony Mathews had thought international missions wasn't for everyone, that as a pastor his focus should be on the local church. North Garland Baptist Fellowship, where he has served for 22 years, supported Southern Baptist missions and ministries through the Cooperative Program. Members of the Texas church had gone on international missions trips, which the pastor had supported -- from a distance.

RICHMOND, Va. (BP) -- After starting a church, the last thing on many pastors' minds would be how that church could immediately have a hand in starting more, especially great distances away. But when church planter Steve Gentry worked with the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia and the North American Mission Board in 2009 to start Village Church at Midlothian, he led the Richmond-suburb church to form a missions partnership with a Southern Baptist couple serving in East Asia within the church's first year of existence.

MONROE, Ga. (BP) -- She wasn't supposed to live. Born more than a half century ago to a 17-year-old mother, the newborn was not expected to survive more than a few days, if that long. Her mother, not yet a Christian, turned to the distraction of television, where a preacher inspired her to pray. She bargained with God that if He would save her baby, then her daughter could serve Him as a missionary.

MONROE, Ga. (BP) -- They are the forgotten people. The individuals you might not even notice if you passed them on the street. They are in every community. On the fringes of neighborhoods dotted with white picket fences. At the end of gravel roads that seem to go nowhere. The people who wash your dishes at the chain restaurant. Change your car's oil. Scramble your eggs at the local diner.