Woman’s Missionary Union celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Christian Women’s Job Corps during their Missions Celebration and Annual Meeting June 10-11 in San Antonio.
The meeting drew more than 600 attendees to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center for sessions that included missionary speakers, worship and key awards for missions involvement.
In celebrating the job corps’ 10th anniversary, Wanda Lee, WMU executive director, led a question-and-answer interview with CWJC volunteers Evelyn Blount, Eileen Fox and Norma Fox, and CWJC graduate Maria Diaz.
Officially organized in 1997, Christian Women’s Job Corps is a ministry that equips women facing a variety of circumstances develop life and job skills. The program involves Bible study, customized instruction and one-on-one mentoring to help participants move toward self-sufficiency.
Blount, WMU executive director from South Carolina who helped birth the program, recounted the need: “A handout wasn’t enough. They needed a hand up.”
Diaz told her story of needing to re-enter the job force but not having the necessary skills. She thanked WMU for the help she received through the CWJC to get a two-year degree and a full-time job that also has become her ministry.
Currently 13,000-plus volunteers serve 2,134 participants at 168 sites across the country, now also including Christian Men’s Job Corps sites and Spanish-language ministries. Job corps training teams also have been sent to Mexico, Moldova and Liberia.
Participants at the WMU gathering also celebrated the two largest offerings ever to international and North American missions. The 2006 Lottie Moon Christmas Offering, with a $150 million goal, reached a final total of $150,178,098. Similarly, members of Southern Baptist churches gave a record $58,475,000 for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering, surpassing the $56 million goal.
Newly elected North American Mission Board president Geoff Hammond credited WMU for its part in praying for and publicizing the annual offerings.
“I believe Southern Baptists still believe in missions,” Hammond said, adding, “I believe Southern Baptists still believe in missionaries.”
Debby Akerman, a retired nurse from Myrtle Beach, received WMU’s Dellanna West O’Brien Award for Women’s Leadership Development.
Established in 1998 on WMU’s 110th anniversary and named for former WMU executive director Dellanna O’Brien, the award recognizes Baptist women who demonstrate an ability to foster Christian leadership in other women, display the potential to be a leader in their community and the world, and excel in missions education.
Akerman is a past president of New England WMU and has served more than two decades as a Girls in Action leader first in New Hampshire and then in South Carolina, where she also now serves as WMU director at Ocean View Baptist Church in Myrtle Beach.
She has been an associational GA consultant, training women to lead GAs in their churches and associations, and has been a national conference leader.
In New Hampshire, Akerman developed a weekly morning missions program at her church that connected women with such agencies as the Red Cross and Meals on Wheels.
She also began a women’s Bible study in a housing complex for low-income seniors.
Since her move to Myrtle Beach, Akerman has begun a weekly Bible study at a local shelter for homeless women with substance abuse problems.
WMU also honored former WMU president Marjorie McCullough by renaming the GA Endowment as the Marjorie McCullough GA Endowment. McCullough, who died in 2006, served as national WMU president from 1986-91.
McCullough’s involvement with WMU began as a child in Louisiana in the Girl’s Auxiliary (now Girls in Action) and she was the WMU’s first GA director. McCullough also was a missionary in Nigeria, Ghana and Brazil.
Participants at the WMU annual meeting also:
– joined in the 300th anniversary celebration of Baptist associations in America, held June 10 at First Baptist Church in San Antonio.
– received an 1889 letter from legendary China missionary Lottie Moon to WMU leader Annie Armstrong, urging that more missionaries be sent to work in China. The letter was a gift presented by the SBC’s International Mission Board. “I am holding on at considerable risk of permanent injury to health. Yet I must not leave until others are here to take over the work,” Moon wrote.
Today, Southern Baptists’ two major missions offerings are named for the women – the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions and the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions.