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Twelve Who Represent the Work of Thousands

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From American Samoa to Montreal, Quebec, more than 5,000 North American missionaries are involved daily in fulfilling the Great Commission. During the Week of Prayer for North American Missions and throughout the year, remember to pray for these featured representative missionaries — as well as their counterparts across the continent.

Ginger Smith (church and community ministries)

Each night about 230 people find shelter at the Brantley Baptist Center in New Orleans, and Ginger Smith is usually on hand to help them get the physical and spiritual care they need. She leads men and women in a drug and alcohol treatment program, does counseling, oversees literacy classes, leads Bible studies, and supervises the women's unit in the facility. She asks for prayer that she would be sensitive to the needs of those around her, and patient as the center undergoes renovations.

Allan and Kathy Karr (church planting)

Allan Karr serves as Nehemiah Project church planting professor at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary, helping train and equip church planters through five seminary campuses across the Western United States. Karr was tapped for the role after serving as a church planter himself in Castle Rock, Colo., just south of Denver. Pray for Allan and Kathy as they continue to help other church planters and their wives cope with the many challenges of this specialized area of ministry.

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Randy and Doris Cowling (associational missions)

Randy Cowling serves as director of missions for forty-one churches in the Kaw Valley Baptist Association in Kansas, helping churches discover and implement God's purposes for their congregations. The association, which covers a twelve-county area, also works to share the gospel with Native Americans living on three reservations. Pray for the Cowlings as they lead the association to be more effective through cooperation in mission and ministry.

Georges and Carolyn Boujakly (church planting)

Georges Boujakly serves as a church planter strategist in Quebec, Canada, confronting what he views as the most post-modern culture in North America. Over the past ten years, Boujakly has seen the number of Southern Baptist churches grow from eight to twenty-two, but with almost 7 million people living in Quebec the task is daunting. He hopes to build a network of house churches, small bodies of believers meeting in homes. The Boujaklys ask prayer for a church planting movement across the province, laborers to gather the harvest, and that the people of Quebec would find the freedom they are seeking in Jesus Christ.

Isaiah and Jan Mejia (church and community ministries)

As a ministry evangelism specialist with the Southern Nevada Baptist Association, Isaiah Mejia coordinates evangelistic outreach ministries at ritzy skyscraper casino-hotels on the neon-lit Las Vegas Boulevard, and through such venues as the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Lake Mead, and Hoover Dam. Pray for Mejia as he helps churches discover new ways to penetrate their community with the gospel, reaching the 777,000 individuals in metropolitan Las Vegas with no church affiliation.

Chris McNairy (church planting)

While serving on staff of a church in suburban Memphis, Tenn., a few years ago, Chris McNairy realized that residents of apartment complexes were interested in participating in church — but only if it was located in their own community. It wasn't long before the association had forty groups meeting in multi-housing developments, many meeting in space donated by landlords. In his new role as a national church-planting missionary for multi-housing, McNairy works nationally to help these groups become self-sufficient congregations. Pray for McNairy as he helps churches see the need for multihousing ministries and take the steps of faith necessary to start churches.

Rob and Sandra Stip (Mission Service Corps)

As directors of the Pago Pago Seafarer's Center in American Samoa for the past two and a half years, Rob and Sandra Stip provided a comfortable place for seafarers to relax, enjoy a game of pool, make international phone calls, and learn about Christ. But the Stips also found themselves serving as advocates: for seafarers not paid by their employers, for Vietnamese garment workers in indentured servitude, and for local children in need of a family environment and Christian teaching. Pray for the Stips as they pursue new avenues of ministry this year, sharing Christ with recreational boaters in North Carolina and Virginia.

Ken and Karen Welborn (United Nations ministries)

From a small office a few blocks from the world headquarters of the United Nations, Ken Welborn ministers to hundreds of U.N. delegates and staff. A weekly Bible study provides fellowship, support, and a gospel witness, and Welborn also visits regularly with diplomats in their offices. Pray that Welborn and the staff of the Christian Ministry to the United Nations would continue to find new ways of impacting members of U.N. community with the gospel — and through them the world.