Reflections on Sarasota Baptist Missions Celebration Weekend

Written by Rod on Sunday, January 31st

What an awesome church family we have! I cannot believe the weekend we just experienced! God did so many miracles that we have seen, I know there must be even more I have not even heard about yet. This was such a blessed way for Donna and me to get ready for the biggest mission trip of our lives.

My dear Lord God Almighty, I stand amazed in your presence at how awesome you are!

Thursday:
We began our Missions Celebration Weekend with our Plus Ministry. We got to hear great testimonies from two different missionaries:
John and Paula Sauder work with EMI in Uganda. We are sending a team there to help them with a construction project this summer. The Sauders will be moving house when they return to Uganda next week and we were able to give them a check for $1500 from the trip funds left over from last year. We were also able to give Paula a Beth Moore study on Esther to take back and help her Women’s Ministry.
The other speaker was a great lady from the Florida Baptist Children’s Home. We learned from her that the home is doing many projects internationally. Right now they are setting up 100-200 beds at the Lake Yale Baptist Camp for orphans from Haiti, which is just incredible. We have several in our church who would like to adopt some of those kids.
In the afternoon, we had a golf tournament fund raiser for our youth mission trips. It raised well over $30,000 for both the youth and our other church wide trips. This event was named in honor of Mac McDonald, who loved both golf and missions and who passed away last year from cancer.
The man I was paired up with kept telling me that his wife wanted to go to Haiti to help out with the disaster there. At that moment I could not help them with that, but the next day I was able to find out that there was a spot for her to go and we quickly got her a ticket on the plane to leave with us on Wednesday. WOW.

Friday:
The youth had a dodge-ball tournament where they could bring their lost friends and about 100 kids showed up. A Missions pastor, Greg Paton from Montana, shared the gospel and did some fire-eating tricks for the kids. About 7 raised their hands to accept Christ as their Savior! Greg got to share with the Aubuchon’s community group at a bonfire about our missions project in Montana. It was great! Both Friday and Saturday our community groups were doing various projects from the Baptist Children’s home in Lakeland to inner city work here in Sarasota.

Saturday:
We welcomed the Out of town missionaries. They set up their displays in the gym and we took them out to dinner. One neat thing that happened over dinner was that when the missions committee was introduced, one of the missionaries recognized his French teacher from high school years and years before. That teacher had recently become very involved in missions and couldn’t believe that a former student was now a full time career missionary. Cool. Dinner and fellowship was great.
With all these wonderful works of God playing out in front of us, the greatest highlight of our celebration weekend for me personally came on Sunday.

Sunday:
Donna and I had sent out a list of things we need to take to Haiti. Oh my goodness, we received enough to fill up 5 duffle bags and then some plus close to $1000 to buy other things. Amazing! I also had about 20 people express that they wanted to go to help out in Haiti. I must find some way to get them down there in the next several months! It is my tendency to try to find a way to make it all happen, but I rest in the assurance that WE HAVE A GREAT BIG GOD WHO CAN DO ANYTHING!

Carrie MacDonall spoke in our evening service to close the weekend. Amidst all the things she said, she asked the question “Why do we do missions in tough places? And why do we do missions at all?” Her answer came from 2 Corinthians 5.
The love of Christ compels us to go do and share the good news.

That is my motto.
That is what I have seen in our church family this weekend.
That is why we go to Haiti.
That is what has marked my life.