David GarrisonI am not a South Carolinian by birth, but I am becoming a convert.
On Jan. 1, 2005, South Carolina Baptists began a three-year partnership with the South Asia Region of the International Mission Board’s seven nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldives. The partnership followed a year of prayerful study and counting the cost. During the year 2004, teams of convention representatives traversed the region, looking, listening, and praying their way through the greatest concentration of lostness on earth: 873 non-Christians per square mile.
By November, the entire South Carolina convention said yes to the Lord’s call and yes to South Asia.
As a Southern Baptist missionary living in this region where the lost outnumber our missionaries more than 7 million to 1, I want you to know that we couldn’t be happier.
On Dec. 26, the day after Christmas – five days before the partnership was even supposed to begin – an event occurred which rocked our world in South Asia forever. A killer tsunami swept the coastlines of Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and the Maldive Islands, leaving some 200,000 dead and more than a million homeless.
Within days, South Carolina Baptists were on the scene walking alongside our missionaries, surveying the devastation and beginning to minister in the name of Jesus Christ and South Carolina Baptists. In the months that followed, South Carolina Baptists have poured time, talent, and treasure into the hearts and lives of the tsunami’s victims.
Since the partnership began, scores of South Carolina Baptists have touched and changed South Asia for Jesus Christ in countless ways. Last April, I sat in the Choudiah Memorial Auditorium in Bangalore, India, and listened to a benefit concert by the South Carolina Singing Churchmen raising money for indigent cancer patients at the Bangalore Baptist Hospital. As I listened to the words of one of their songs – “You lift me up and make me more than I can be” – I thanked God for South Carolina Baptists who have walked alongside our missionaries and made us more than we could be on our own.
Friends, this could be the beginning of a wonderful three-year partnership. No, I am not a South Carolinian by birth, but thanks to South Carolina Baptists, I am quickly becoming a convert.