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CBF of VA had its General Assembly today at Poplar Springs Baptist Church near Richmond. CBFVA is entering a yearlong partnership with CBF personnel in Slovakia. Interestingly, we were meeting in a church begun by Slovak and Czech immigrants where the services were conducted in Slovak until after World War II. The meeting drew over 200 (my estimate), shared a missions banquet at which our partners from Macau who have been our focus for the past year shared how the partnership had helped them. We received the report that the budget for this fiscal year had been fully met and adopted a $189,000 budget for next year. It was also announced that CB FVA had just called a new Missions Coordinator who will be in charge of our partnerships, the work of the group going to Slovakia, and the Mission Madness events for youth. CB FVA seems alive and well.

Sounds good. What sort of partners do you have in Slovakia and Macau? Missionaries? Local churches? Schools? Hospitals? Baptist, non-Baptist or ecumenical-including-Baptists? And in the case of Macau, what did the report show as the positive outcomes?

Dave,

The next-next issue of fellowship! magazine (I'm the new-ish editor, I took over with June issue) will feature a profile on Jon and Tanya Parks as well as a story on Poplar Springs Baptist Church. We were already planning on profiling the Parks, two of our self or partner-funded field personnel, but then Rob Fox alerted me to the Slovakia connection w/ Poplar Springs and CBFVA's partnership with the Parks. That issue will be out in early December.

I've had a good bit of interaction with Shane McNary and met him recently when he was in Decatur. The McNarys are also in Slovakia. I wrote a story in the upcoming issue of fellowship! magazine on the McNarys and Rachel Brunclikova (who is in the Czech Republic) - they were involved in disaster relief efforts in the region, there was devastating flooding in Central Europe back in May, actually the costliest worldwide natural disaster thus far in 2013, more costly than the Oklahoma tornadoes.

Tanya Parks is the daughter of John Lepper, Ky CBF Coordinator. At one time he was my pastor in Milledgeville, Ga. and we have kids of similar ages. So now I remember with pride our days of baby-sitting a future CBF missionary.

I would add that her sister and brother-in-law are also missionaries, with IMB.

In a few days but replacement Shores could be fascinating.

Also hope my blog on Speaker Hubbard garners some corridor talk