Baptist group continues ministry

By Kathy Thomson

Almost a dozen members of First Baptist Church will head to Del Rio this Sunday, June 30, on the congregation’s annual adult summer mission trip.

“We never know for sure how many until we see who actually shows up on the day we leave,” organizer Dinty Bowman said. “Our church started doing the mission trips in 1995 or 1996, and I’ve only missed out on four of those.”

Workers are welcome to join the mission group, and contributions to help offset the costs of the trip and construction supplies are also appreciated.

“We did an out-of-town fundraiser recently, building a fence for a landowner, so we are doing pretty good right now,” Bowman said. “We are still accepting donations, but God takes care of us.”

This year the group will work on both a church and a mission house in Del Rio for River Ministry.

The church is old and run-down, but is still being used to teach arts and crafts to local children.

“The kids enjoy the crafts, and it gets them used to going to school,” said Bowman. “It’s a wonderful little ministry. They (River Ministry’s leaders) know that if you start by winning the kids to Jesus, then it’s easier to win Mom, and then the toughest one – Dad.”

The Albany group plans to work on the interior of the church.

“It needs a little TLC,” said Bowman. “We will work on doors, ceilings, walls, and maybe the floor, to get it all clean and neat. We also have a little work to do at the place where we’ll stay.”

The group will be housed at a location they worked on two summers ago.

The former owner of the house donated it to River Ministry, which uses it to house mission teams when they are working in the nearby Rio Grande area of Texas and Mexico.

“The main thing that we did while we were there in 2017 was take down a wall between the original kitchen and dining room to open up the two areas into one large room, and move the kitchen into a different room,” said FBC member Kyle Vier-tel. “We moved the plumbing and gas lines for the kitchen stove and sink, added a new support beam to the weight-bearing wall, installed sheet rock, molding, and trim, and did some electrical work.”

The former owner, an 83-year-old woman the group calls “Granny B,” still lives in the house and helps take care of the mission groups, even washing their clothes every night, according to Bowman.

“The remodeled house has four bedrooms and four bathrooms,” Bowman said. “Those, combined with two portable buildings, allow it to house large groups, and the table can seat up to 24 people.”

The texturing and painting were not completed during the previous trip, and some of that still needs to be finished.

“We are a little different than most mission groups,” said Bowman. “Unlike a lot of them, we are geared up to do construction work.”

First Baptist Church members have often traveled for hours, driving or flying out of state or even out of the country on mission projects. Last year they worked on building a house in Albany to replace one destroyed by fire. 

This will be the FBC missions team’s third year to work at the Del Rio location.

The group will return to Albany on July 4th or 5th.