By QUINN LAVESPERE, Message Summer Staff Writer

PORT BARRE – First Port Barre Baptist Church Pastor Benji Richard is a man who has seen both the depths of depravity and the fullness of God’s love.

Nearly eight years after being saved, Richard has realized his dream of becoming pastor in his hometown of Port Barre, leading First Port Barre to spiritual triumphs through the blessings and work of God.

By QUINN LAVESPERE, Message Summer Staff Writer

EROS – The month of October normally inspires people to prepare for Halloween. Pastor Gary Brewster and O.K. Corral Church have other plans in mind.

O.K. Corral Church plans to host a rough stock training camp Oct. 8-10 for bull riders and bareback riders.

Editor’s note: Every church, every person in Greater New Orleans has stories to tell of the impact of Hurricane Katrina. Following are the beginnings of several of them. Subscribers to the Baptist Message can read the articles in their entirety online at www.baptistmessage.com.

CHALMETTE

CHALMETTE – St. Bernard Baptist Church has a mostly new body of believers since Hurricane Katrina, many of them former Catholics displaced from their parishes after the storm.

Paul Gregoire, who has led St. Bernard Baptist for nearly 28 years, had baptized 12 former Catholics into the congregation as of August. That’s sizable, considering the church draws about 35 people on Sundays.

By Marilyn Stewart, Regional Reporter

By Quinn Lavespere, Message Summer Staff Writer

EROS – When most people hear the words “O.K. Corral,” they tend to think of the famous shootout.  In Eros, those words have a different connotation.

Pastor Gary Brewster and the congregation of Cowboy Church at the O.K. Corral “shoot” for the souls of those who need Jesus and not at the bodies of hostile enemies, the pastor said.

By Quinn Lavespere, Message Summer Staff Writer

HORNBECK – It was a seed planted two years ago.

First Baptist Church of Hornbeck celebrated its first-ever quilt camp on June 7-12, after months of planning and praying, quilt camp director Mary Wind said.  

“It was an idea I really prayed about that God just wouldn’t allow me to let go of,” Wind said.  “I just had to do it.”

Wind described how the idea for the camp came into existence.

  By Diana Chandler, Regional Reporter

NEW ORLEANS – Emily McIlwain won’t share many details of her baptism.

    Instead, the eight-year-old smiles and shyly seeks cover behind her mother as she relates how Calvary Baptist Senior Pastor Michael Carney placed her in the water two years ago.

  What made Emily’s experience so different from other Southern Baptist baptisms is that her parents Tammy and Allen McIlwain were in the pool with Emily. In fact, they baptized her themselves.

By Quinn Lavespere, Message Summer Staff Writer

VIDALIA – Some people would say that churches with interim pastors are in a time of transition.  First Baptist Church of Vidalia would think otherwise.

First Baptist Church Vidalia Interim Pastor Bill McCullinSince the appointment of Interim Pastor Bill McCullin in January, First Vidalia has seen an increase in Sunday School attendance over the last several months while following McCullin’s God-focused leadership.

By Karen Willoughby, Managing Editor

SICILY ISLAND, CROWLEY, MONROE/WEST MONROE, CALHOUN – In his famous “I have a dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. articulated his hope that one day character would matter more than ethnicity. Some have been content to simply wait for the Civil Rights leader’s vision to materialize.

There are pastors in Louisiana, however, who have decided to do something to make Kings’s dream a reality.   

“This area has been controversial between races over the years,” said James Gass, pastor for the last three years at First Baptist Church of Sicily Island, in Ouachita Baptist Association. “My hope was that if nothing else, this crusade would bring us together on common ground, and I believe it did.”

This spring, churches and groups of churches across Louisiana worked together to bring racial and community reconciliation.

This article looks at four of those events.

By Quinn Lavespere, Message Summer Staff Writer

Established in 1835, First Baptist Church of Jackson recently celebrated its 175th anniversaryJACKSON – In the heart of the Felicianas nestles a church that recently celebrated with dinner on the grounds its Sunday morning worship, annual homecoming, the 149th anniversary of its sanctuary, and the 175th anniversary of the founding of the church in 1835.

Joe Nesom has been pastor for the last 27 years.

By Staff, Baptist Message

NATCHITOCHES – First Baptist Church of Natchitoches plans to send several members on an 11-day multi-focus mission trip to Choimim, Kenya, this June.

It will be the third time in five years that a First Natchitoches mission’s team has gone to Kenya.

First Baptist Natchitoches plans to help at Noel Childrens Center during its 11-day multi-focus mission trip to Kenya this June“There are moments and experiences that define and change the direction of our lives,” said Tanya Conlay, one of the returning members of the mission team. “Spending eleven days in rural Kenya where homes have no electricity or running water, the roads are unpaved, and there is no medical care available is one such experience.”

PINEVILLE – Here are the winners of the 2010 Youth and High school Bible drill, Xtreme Bible Challenge and Speakers’ Tournament held at Louisiana College on May 1.

The event is sponsored by the Louisiana Baptist Convention’s Evangelism and Church Growth Department.

Linda Aguillard is Louisiana’s Bible drill coordinator.

By Diana Chandler Regional Reporter

NEW ORLEANS – It took longtime homeowner Elsie Clark nearly three years to return home after Hurricane Katrina, but she readily offers praises for the blessing.

Were it not for a partnership between Franklin Avenue Baptist Church, where she has attended for 30 years, and Samaritan’s Purse International Relief, the 68-year-old Clark says she might still be displaced in Jackson, Miss., nearly four years after the storm.

Karen L. Willoughby, Managing Editor

By Philip Timothy, Message Staff Writer

PINEVILLE – They bring the food we eat; the clothes we wear, and countless other items we use in our everyday lives.

In other words, “if you bought it, a truck probably brought it.”

Trucks, and the estimated 3.5 million men and women who drive them, play an invaluable role in keeping the U.S. economy running. In order to do so, many of these men, and women spend long, lonely hours away from home and their loved ones.

The trucker’s big rigs, which command the road, offer little in the way of creature comforts.

Trucking is a hard, demanding job that offers these men and women very little thanks or notice.

Libby Lingenfelter, member of Kingsville Baptist Pineville, has made truck drivers into a mission field.Libby Lingenfelter, a member of Kingsville Baptist Pineville, has made changing these truckers’ plight into her mission field.