Mount Vernon -- Three groups of Brewton-Parker students joined other Georgia Baptists who passed on vacations during spring break in order to participate in missions opportunities.

The largest group, of 26 students, traveled to the southwest Florida community of Fort Ogden. It was the college's second venture of hurricane disaster relief from the 2004 storms under the auspices of the Florida Baptist Convention.

Another group of nine students and two leaders, led by campus minister Glenn Wallace, ventured south to the mountainous region of Nicaragua for a week's time of gospel sharing.

Hal Ostrander, chair of Brewton-Parker's Division of Religion and Philosophy, led a group of six students to the former Soviet republic of Belarus where they worked side-by-side with Belarusian students.

That trip was arranged through Bob Hartman International Ministries and organized at Brewton-Parker through Ostrander's Apologetics Practicum course.

While teaching Christian apologetics was the mission group's primary thrust, witnessing with apologetics in mind had to be done under restricted circumstances, in this case under the auspices of an English as a Second Language course in Minsk, the Belarusian capital.

The Brewton-Parker team members spent their mornings in chapel services and classes with the host students, and then went on prayer walks during their afternoon hours before their ESL classes during the evenings.

Allen Rea, a Brewton-Parker sophomore from Hazlehurst, said the ESL students were very interested to learn about their American guests, and thus the doors of opportunity to share their Christian faith were opened. "I think God was able to plant and water some seeds," he added.

"They led the discussion to the theological questions," added Scott Welborn, a senior from Elko. "The first night was just about all theological in nature."

The Nicaragua trip was born out of a visit to Brewton-Parker in February 2004 by Loren Dickey, the regional coordinator for Operation GO (Gospel Outreach) in the Central American nation.

"He sparked our interest and so we enlisted the students to go," said Wallace, who also took a student's parent on the trip.

The delegation established a base camp in the city of Murra in the northern mountainous region of Nicaragua, and the team members hiked from there daily to find smaller villages in remote areas.

 

A return not void

On their first day, team members performed prayer walks through the villages, then during each of the following three days they distributed booklets containing the Gospel of Luke to villagers. During the evenings, the American guests showed the Jesus film to their hosts.

"It was a physically hard trip but spiritually refreshing," said Wallace, who said he calculated that the team totaled about 250 hiked miles and about 6 miles per day per person through the mountains.

"The immediate results will be in our students' lives. The long-term results will come there. We hold to the Scripture that the return is not void. The International Mission Board is now geared toward

emphasizing the nationals to advance the work. Our presence sparked an excitement; they referred to us as 'our special guests' a lot."

The Florida trip followed one in December on which Wallace took 20 Brewton-Parker students over Christmas break. "Everybody was so excited and wanted to go back, and then others wanted to go," said Michael Brown, a Brewton-Parker junior from Guyton, who led the second delegation.

The second group worked with a construction crew from Illinois and a couple from Kentucky in clearing fallen trees from orchards and yards that remained from Hurricane Charley in August. "We just did what college students could do," Brown said.

Brown said the group attempted to empty one home, which had become molded after the hurricane, so it could be leveled, but storms during their week prevented them from completing the task. "It is amazing how much labor they still need," Brown added.

Brown said the trip's highlight was having one student accept Christ and then having his baptism at First Baptist Church in Fort Ogden, where the Brewton-Parker delegation stayed.

"I think missions is more in-reaching than outreaching," Brown said. "God really broke people's hearts that week."