The Prayer Link

Please add Dillon Gorman to the prayer link. He is a 6th grade student at Sumner Middle that has been burned and is in Baton Rouge General Burn Unit for 7-10 days. We just found out this morning when we got to school. Dillon is a precious child that works very hard and is very smart. Please pray for his family and him as he goes through the next few weeks of treatment. Thanks, Tammie Roberts

I talked with Ferrin Hendry’s grandfather last night. She is continuing to progress, but will be in Baton Rouge for a while longer. Please continue to pray for her and her family.

Jon Hodge Leads NAMB’s

World Changers Ministry in Five States

By Mickey Noah

BARTLETT, Tenn. – For nine years now, Jon Hodge has been in the neighborhood-changing business, and while he’s changing neighborhoods, he’s also working — with God’s help — to change hearts, minds and souls.

Based out of Bartlett, Tenn. just northeast of Memphis, Jon and Linda Hodge are national missionaries for the North American Mission Board (NAMB), an assignment that takes Jon to middle Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, southern Illinois and Alaska.

Hodge manages a big chunk of NAMB’s nationwide World Changers ministry. Created in 1990, World Changers is a pre-packaged mission experience that enables students – middle schoolers to collegians – and adults to donate a week of their summers to rehabilitate substandard housing and share Christ.

Last summer, some 25,000 World Changers participants partnered with 1,100 churches in 88 separate projects across the United States, which resulted in 900 decisions for Christ and the repair and renovation of 1,700 homes.

The Hodges are two of more than 5,000 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® for North American Missions. They are one of eight NAMB missionary couples highlighted as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 2-9, 2008. This year’s theme is “Live with Urgency: Seize Your Divine Moment.” The 2008 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $61 million, 100 percent of which is used for missionaries like the Hodges.

Responsible for planning and coordinating 13-17 different World Changers projects in the five states he represents, Hodge spends many months – prior to the actual summer project months — picking cities, meeting with city officials, school officials, city economic leaders and homeowners to choose the renovation projects. He also must ensure that his World Changers participants have a place to stay, get fed, serve and share.

Hodge also selects and trains about 25 college students who serve as summer staff volunteers for four-five World Changers projects, traveling from site to site. The projects are in lower-income neighborhoods of cities large and small.

Each volunteer has a different role – office manager, music leader, audio-visual (AV) person and even a missions communication specialist responsible for alerting local media to World Changers activities in a given city. They, in turn, work for World Changers’ experienced project coordinators, construction and ministry coordinators.

“The college students must be strong people to serve on these teams,” Hodge said. “We need leaders who’ll take a group and lead it. We have to have people strong in computers and AV. Mainly, we need kids who are willing to go, serve and work hard because it’s long hours. You may go from 5:00 one morning to 1:00 the next morning. You have to be flexible, have a great personality and be willing to do whatever the Lord wants you to do that week.”

Regardless of the project venue, Hodge says the first questions the World Changers always get from local residents are “why are you here?” or “why are you doing this?”

“And we’re able to share with them that we’re doing this because we love Jesus, and Jesus called us to go, serve and help people,” Hodge says.

Hodge recants the true story of a man in Gulfport, Miss., the victim of Hurricane Katrina. About 350 World Changers were on the scene in Gulfport to help local residents re-build.

The 50-something man — naturally suspicious of anyone claiming to want to help him for free — had already run off others from another denomination who had volunteered to re-roof his wind-damaged home.

“Then he met 12 teenagers and adults who had come from different Baptist churches in different places to help hurricane victims,” Hodge recalls. “He said he could see in them a love that he had never seen before. He said he had to have what this group had. He accepted Christ because of the witness of the World Changers.” He also got his new roof — at no charge.

Prior to his appointment as a NAMB national missionary, Hodge worked as a coach, truck driver and a Krispy Kreme Doughnut route salesman. Before his call to full-time missions work, he also served as a youth and recreation minister for 11 years in Tennessee and Illinois churches.

“My call to missions came after I took a youth group to a World Changers project in Alabama. The more I became involved on the leadership side of World Changers as a project coordinator and speaker, the stronger the call I felt to be involved in missions.

“I had taken the group to Alabama to rehab the homes of several low-income homeowners. I thought I was going to change their world by repairing their homes and sharing the love of Christ with them. But not only were their lives changed, my life was changed,” Hodge said.

After a hard day of installing a new roof or scraping and painting a house in summer’s heat, the World Changers spend evenings after dinner in worship services, led by student ministers and music leaders, also volunteers.

“World Changers makes my day, my summer,” Hodge says. “It’s exciting. I have one of the best jobs in the world. I thank the Lord everyday that I’m a Southern Baptist missionary.

“There are times when it’s tough during the summer — long hours and a lot of different things going on, and a lot of fires to put out. But it’s all worth it when you see these high school and college students, and hear the stories of how their lives were impacted and changed.”

Because Hodge now has been working with World Changers for nine years, he’s seen high school and college students grow up, finish their educations, marry and have their own children.

“I’ve seen many college students come in, thinking they’re going to be something else in life, but God gets a hold of them that summer and they realize they want to be in the ministry or go into missions. It’s exciting at the end of the summer when we compile everything and see 1,000 or more students who say ‘I want missions to be part of my life.’ That makes it all worth it right there,” said Hodge.

Hodge said he wants to thank “those people who give Annie Armstrong Easter Offerings sacrificially.

“Because of them, I don’t have to come back from the field worried about whether I have food on the table back at home or whether my family is being taken care of. I can go out and do the ministry I’ve been called to do.

“Southern Baptists need to be involved in World Changers because it’s an opportunity for us to be out there and to touch people’s lives. I’ve seen this program open up doors that through other avenues, we couldn’t open up.”

Hodge says back home in Bartlett, wife Linda “keeps the home fires burning bright when I am traveling,” which is much of the time. Married since 1983, they have three children – a college sophomore, an 11^th grader and a third grader.

Missionaries Jon, Mindy Jamison Live

in a Missions ‘Field of Dreams’ in Iowa

­­By Mickey Noah

DES MOINES, Iowa – Iowa conjures up images of a Midwestern state of green cornfields, big-time pig and dairy farming, small towns and the fictional setting for wonderful movies like “The Music Man” and “Field of Dreams.”

“The Hawkeye State” certainly is all those positive things and more. But Des Moines — Iowa’s state capital and largest city with 500,000 people — also is plagued with the same neighborhood gangs, crime, violence, drugs and poverty of other American cities. Just ask Jon and Mindy Jamison.

For almost nine years, Jon and Mindy, both 33, have been a husband-wife team of North American Mission Board (NAMB) missionaries, working as co-directors of Friendship Baptist Center in inner-city Des Moines. They are also state church and community ministries directors for the Baptist Convention of Iowa.

The Jamisons are two of more than 5,000 missionaries in the United States, Canada and their territories supported by the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering® for North American Missions, and are one of eight NAMB missionary couples highlighted as part of the annual Week of Prayer, March 2-9, 2008. This year’s theme is “Live with Urgency: Seize Your Divine Moment.” The 2008 Annie Armstrong Easter Offering’s goal is $61 million, 100 percent of which is used for missionaries like the Jamisons.

The Friendship Baptist Center, a non-descript building, sits on the corner of Meek Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway in Des Moines.

“The neighborhood surrounding the Friendship Baptist Center is a poverty-impacted community,” according to Jon. “Upwards of 30-35 percent of the households are in poverty. Many of the people are victims of crime. There’s a lot of violence, gang activity and drugs in the communities surrounding the center. So we have a challenge just outside our doors.

“Many people struggle with having something to eat, having clothes to wear, shelter, heat in the winter. For kids in the area, there’s no one at home to take care of them. Kids must find a way to wake themselves up in the morning. If there’s food in the house, they have to make their own breakfast. They have to find a way to school, if they go. Many kids are sort of their own parents. That may sound like fun, but it also brings some struggles for the kids,” Jamison said.

Mindy Jamison echoes her husband.

“The kids get up and don’t take a bath because there’s no water. They don’t have a toothbrush or shampoo. They probably forget to take their books to school. They walk to school in the cold, and it gets very cold in Des Moines,” said Mindy. “They go hungry and without basic needs, much less encouragement and nourishment.

“I think if that doesn’t break our heart, if that doesn’t concern us, then our heart isn’t lined up with the heart of Christ. He was so concerned for the least of these.”

Mindy, who grew up doing urban missions work in her native Fort Myers, Fla., calls the neighborhood around the Friendship Center “great” and “horrible” at the same time. The center serves primarily African-Americans and Hispanics, and refugee families from Zaire, Sudan and Bosnia.

The Friendship Center is multi-faceted. “Kids Club” is an after-school program in which children come in and get help with their homework, play board games or sports. They also learn about life skills, nutrition and even how to cook. And, of course, the Jamisons teach them about the Bible.

“Once we get to know the kids better, we offer a Bible study and teach them what God says about their lives and how God wants to be a part of their lives,” said Jamison. “Many times, we tell them Bible stories, and it’s the first time they’ve ever heard Bible stories. It’s great to see the lights come on when they realize that God loves them and can provide for them.”

Telling the center’s kids Bible stories is different from teaching children who’ve grown up in a Southern Baptist church, who can finish the story just by giving them the story’s character or topic.

“Many of the neighborhood kids here are waiting on the edge of their seats to find out how the Bible story ends,” Mindy says, “because they haven’t heard it before.”

Mindy credits the center’s 15 Kid’s Club volunteers, who come and “pour their lives into these kids every day.” In all, some 250 volunteers support Jon and Mindy with their myriad of ministries on an annual basis.

“The kids get to meet volunteers from all over who may be Iowa State students, people from local churches, and others. The kids get to rub shoulders with them and be mentored by them. Our kids get help with their homework, hear the Gospel and get a snack. It’s so important . . . to get them here, off the streets and into a positive place.”

Another huge project for the center is teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), conversational English and the ability to read.

“It’s a great way for us to connect to the community,” says Jon. “Immigrants and refugees come to Des Moines and need to provide for their families. They need a job. And often they can find better jobs if they speak English. They may not have a hunger need or a clothing need, but it’s easy for them to know that they have a need to speak English.”

The center also provides food to the hungry, clothes to the needy, adult Bible studies, GED tutoring and summer camps.

“The Clothes Closet is an important ministry because it’s free, and because it’s meeting such a basic need. A lot of our ladies come to the Clothes Closet. They call it ‘The Mall.’ It’s fun for them to come and get new clothes for themselves and for their children, as well as free household items,” said Mindy.

The Clothes Closet offers the Jamisons a chance to build personal relationships, share with the women “customers” and talk about spiritual things.

“When they come in for clothes, we ask them about other needs in their lives,” Mindy says. “We ask them if we can pray for them. We ask them if they know about Christ. It’s an avenue for us to share the Gospel and build relationships.”

“We have found that forming relationships is the way we’re going to introduce Christ in Des Moines,” said Jon, “not only to the children but to the adults. If we can connect with them on a level that is non-threatening – a level that says ‘I’m fun and I want to have fun with you’ – then we can relax. Once we get to know them, the spiritual conversations can take place. We can talk to them about the things that bother and worry them, and share the love of Christ with them.”

One of the most challenging problems facing the Jamisons is ongoing gang activity in the area and preventing kids at the Friendship Center from joining the gangs that roam inner-city Des Moines.

“Many of the kids join a gang because either they want power or protection,” says Jon. “Some people will join a gang because they know they can wield power. They can be a powerful person in the neighborhood. Or they fear that without the gang, they will be picked on. They feel like a gang gives them a ready-made group of people who are willing to stand up with them.

“A lot of times the gang becomes their family. The gang provides immediate support, immediate family and immediate love.”

Jon says gangs make it difficult for the children and youth who want to do what’s right, who want to follow Christ.

“The kids still have to face the pressures of violence in the streets,” he said. “They have to decide ‘am I willing to stand alone and be a Christian and follow Christ and do what that means, or do I want to surround myself with gang members and let them become my family?’

”Through the Friendship Baptist Center, the kids are taught that God loves them and that God has a plan for them, beyond violence and destructiveness.

“Some people have not heard the name of Jesus. We share the Gospel and often it’s the first time someone’s ever heard of Jesus,” Mindy said.

“This community also is, at times, devastated by violence,” said Jon. “Many people in the community have had violence affect them in some way. Family members have been affected. We have many people from the community who are in prison right now because of violence. Our goal is that as these people come to know Christ, the crimes will stop and the reliance on drugs will stop.”

The stakes are high in inner-city Des Moines, Jon said.

“While we know we’re attempting to reach this community for Christ, there are gang leaders who are attempting to reach the community, too. There are people of other faiths who are trying to reach this community,” said Jon, referring to Muslims, Buddhists and Mormons who are aggressive in the spreading of their religions locally.

The Jamisons say they are “blessed” they are able to serve together as husband and wife and bring Maggie, their almost two-year-old daughter, to work with them every day.

“When Jon and I first met, we both knew that God had called us to do inner-city missions work, and so we knew we would work together. “We can come to work together every day and can both be used of God,” said Mindy.

Jon, a native of Elizabethton, Tenn., and Mindy both accepted Christ as children, graduated from Carson-Newman College in Jefferson City, Tenn., and from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. They fell in love with missions because of mission trips they participated in during their youth.

“The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering is such a blessing to us,” Mindy says. “We’re so thankful that we don’t have to stop our work and go and raise funds somewhere. Because of financial cooperation among Southern Baptists, we can focus on the ministry without worrying about where funds will come from or where our next paycheck will come from, or how to find money to feed hungry people.

“Through the Annie Armstrong offering, we are able to offer the love of Christ to people out of a ministry center without closing the doors every couple of months to seek additional funding,” she said. “Annie Armstrong provides consistent, reliable ministry for those in need all year-round. We also know Baptists are praying for us as they give. It enables us to be here and the ministries to continue. It’s our lifeline here in Iowa.”