Published: December 19, 2006 07:10 pm         

If You Ask Me by Guinn Sweet

Hold the ropes, lest they fall

By Guinn Sweet
“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world”

– (Jesus, speaking in Matthew 28: 19-20 KJV).

The “Great Commission” scripture has always been an important one for me, and after Colon and I married, it became even more so, since we both desired the call of the Lord on our lives to go into foreign missions ministry.

We prayed, visited missionary friends in Africa, gave to the missions expenses of our church, even to the point of attending foreign missions weeks for many years at Glorieta, a New Mexico Baptist Summer Camp near Santa Fe. We volunteered our presence to several missions over the years, as recently as 2005.

It was all to no avail, and we were repeatedly told, in scripture and in sermons and lessons, that His call on our lives was that of being “senders.” This call was amplified and supported by our church, Victory Baptist in Weatherford, about 15 years ago when a mission conference was inaugurated as an annual event. From that point onward, that became our perspective of God's call to us - we must hold the ropes, lest they fall.

Over the past years since that event, our church has continued the missions emphasis week each spring, giving them titles such as, “Serving As Senders,” “Fingerprints Around the World,” and others, with this year's titled emphasis: “Global Vision, to the Regions Beyond.”

It turned out to be the most exciting and the most involving of them all. Over the past years, we have become more personally involved with the individual missionary families whom we have invited to attend the conferences. This was solidified two to three years ago when we were given lists of “personal” needs of each missionary family in attendance. We could see that their needs were closely aligned with our own, bringing them closer to our hearts and interest.

Another year we began an outreach that provided the scriptures, mostly in Spanish and Portuguese, to be sent to the missionaries whom we support in countries of Central and South America. That is the one we referred to as “Fingerprints …”.

The “Global Vision” of this year's missions conference considered the eight zones of the earth in numerical order - North America, Central America, South America, Europe, Africa, Eurasia, Asia and the South Pacific. We support missions in all eight zones. There are 25 areas within these zones, of which we support missionaries in 22. Division of the regions resulted in 52 clusters of 250 nations, with numerous people groups. It is the goal of our church to reach each of these groups with missionaries being supported by our membership gifts.

Our most recent outreach has been toward zones five and six, with four missionaries attending our conference this past week. We hosted the Edgar Feghaly family of North Africa (Egypt and Southern Sudan) and the Middle East (Syria and Lebanon, with one mission in Baghdad);; The Juwa Adams family, ministering in Kazakhstan (old USSR); the Carl Stanley family of Tanzania (East Africa); and the Andrew Briggs family of Latvia (former satellite of USSR); as well as four other missionaries, members of our local church, who serve in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Brazil and the Jews of Israel and the world!

Beyond the Biblical injunction to all Christians to “go into all the world,” there was another practical application made (to our ability, in this advanced technological and communicative world, to answer this call) - “If Coca-Cola, Wal-Mart and McDonalds can do it to make a buck, we can do it for the glory of God and the eternal good of our fellow man!” So, we will send and support if you will go.