Teen Girls Urged To Serve People Living In Poverty
By Eva Wilson
January 2012
Participants in Shine 2011 were challenged to focus totally on God and avoid having a divided heart.
Shine, which is KNCSB’s annual retreat for teen girls, drew a packed house to Webster Conference Center, Salina, Kan., Nov. 11-12. The retreat theme was “Heartbeat,” based on Psalm 86:11.
EternityFocus, a group of four sisters from Lebanon, Kan., led worship and also issued challenges to Shine participants. Mindy Jamison was the featured missionary. She is a North American Mission Board missionary who works with her husband, Jon, at the Baptist Friendship Center in Des Moines, Iowa.
Shine also offered the girls opportunities for hands-on missions, including assembling hygiene kits for the Baptist Friendship Center. Tables in the back of the chapel in the WCC multipurpose building were covered with supplies the girls brought for the hygiene kits.
The hygiene kits will meet a great need, Jamison said. The Baptist Friendship Center “was completely out of hygiene items” in mid-November when Shine was held.
As the girls assembled the hygiene kits, Jamison urged them to pray for the people who will receive the kits.
Jamison told how she accepted Christ as her Savior while attending Vacation Bible School at her grandparents’ church. “The summer between 6th and 7th grades I heard about Jesus for the first time. I had never heard the gospel presented.”
God then called Jamison to serve people who are living in poverty. She and her husband have worked in Des Moines for 12½ years.
“God called me to serve the ‘least of these’,” Jamison said. “That’s what I get to do every day.”
The Baptist Friendship Center serves an inner-city neighborhood in Des Moines, which has a diverse ethnic population, including African-Americans, people from countries in Africa, as well as Spanish-speaking people.
“The world has come to Des Moines,” Jamison said.
She challenged the girls to go home and find ways to serve people who are living in poverty.
“In your town there are people who don’t have what they need,” she said. “You can do so much in your community.”
Jamison also thanked the girls for supporting the Cooperative Program and giving to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions. As North American Mission Board missionaries, she and her husband receive support from the Annie Armstrong Offering.
During the large-group sessions, Jamison led the girls in praying for missionaries who had birthdays.
Missionaries “are counting on your prayers,” she said.
Jamison’s birthday is on Valentine’s Day. Like many other missionaries, she postpones important decisions until her birthday because she knows Southern Baptists will be praying for her.
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