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AUSTIN?For more than 20 years Alan Brown thought success meant climbing the corporate ladder. “Six years ago God showed me that I was on the wrong ladder,” stated the former grocer from Tyler, Texas, as he testified to his call to missions during an appointment service of the International Mission Board Sept. 9 at Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin. Brown told the audience that he and his wife, Donna, were leaving everything behind to be on mission with God in northern Mexico where he will serve as a strategy coordinator.
God confirmed Donna’s call to missions on her first short-term trip to Mexico. “Seeing the excitement in their eyes and the smiles on their faces as the children learned about the love of Jesus, I knew I’d found my calling,” she said. “Now we’re going on a God-sized adventure in Mexico.”
Dallas native David Humphrey stood in a packed stadium as a college senior watching and listening as thousands of students from many nations worshiped Jesus. Years later, he and his wife, Danyl sensed God calling them to Brazil as they ministered among the homeless of that country. He will serve as strategy coordinator in Eastern South America.
“At a hostel in Israel, hearing the gospel preached simultaneously in Russian, Rojanian, Chinese, Hebrew and English,” Susan Taliaferro said, “God gave me a glimpse of seeing the nations represented in heaven.” Her husband, Jeremy, felt compelled to mission service while a youth attending Glorieta Conference Center.
They are members of Plymouth Park Baptist Church in Irving, where they were involved in an apartment church plant along with Primera Iglesia Bautista. He will serve as a strategy coordinator in Western South America.
“In a Brazilian slum, I shared the gospel with a woman who had never heard,” Taliaferro said, adding, “God was there. On the Apurucayali River, I listened as an Asheninka man shared biblical stories all night, finishing at dawn with the resurrection. God was there. Now we are going to the most isolated people in Peru. God is there!”
Before Aaron Tipps was born his grandfather prayed for a missionary to come from his family. Looking toward relatives seated in the audience, Tipps said, “Praise God for answered prayer, Granddaddy.” During a mission conference held at his church, Epps sensed God’s call to missions. “On a remote grass runway in Papau, New Guinea, I told God, ‘whatever, whenever.'”
Tiffany Epps learned while serving a Detroit inner-city mission that “life was not about me.” She knew at that point that she would do whatever God wanted and go wherever He sent her. “A summer in Hungary confirmed my call. Now we’re going to the jungles of Brazil,” she said as she and her husband will be involved in outreach and church planting She was born in Nederland, Texas, and graduated from Western Texas College in Snyder.
David Janz pastored Lake O’ the Pines Baptist Church in Avinger, Texas, from 1997 to 2000 and will be serving in Southern Africa in an evangelism/church planter role. His wife, Jody, will be involved in outreach.
Gary and Donna Cain enjoyed the home church advantage as they expressed appreciation for the time spent with the congregation of Great Hills Baptist. “This generation could be our last chance to share the good news to a lost world,” he said. “As the sun sets each day, we have one less day to accomplish our unfinished task.”
In a Caribbean crusade Donna Cain was witnessing and a woman accepted Jesus Christ as Savior. “She didn’t have a Bible so I gave her mine. As I left her, she was clutching the Bible to her heart with tears of joy running down her cheeks,” Donna recalled. “God us
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