Bardstown—At the recent 105th annual meeting of Kentucky Woman’s Missionary Union, members and guests of the women’s auxiliary heard how their support is impacting people around the world, and about the joys available to those who choose to serve.

The meeting was held March 28-29 at Parkway Baptist Church in Bardstown.

Rick Brenny, a Southern Baptist North American missionary and executive director of the Jefferson Street Baptist Center in Louisville, thanked WMU members for their prayers, in-kind donations and missions advocacy.

“We could not do what we do without God’s people,” he emphasized. “You keep churches focused on missions ... (and) going in the right direction.” The center provides services to homeless adults in Louisville, including a day shelter and temporary housing.

Brenny added that the Eliza Broadus Offering for state missions “has been huge in the life of Jeff Street.” The ministry serves 2,200 people annually.

In 2006, Claudio Toro left a successful business career in Chile to come to Kentucky. Today he is pastor of Iglesia Bautista Cardinal Valley in Lexington. The congregation provides assistance to some of the 25,000 Hispanics living in the Cardinal Valley area of Lexington.

The church is open every day except Friday, offering two hours of tutoring for Hispanic students of the local elementary school. There is a craft ministry for the women and ongoing efforts to meet day-to-day needs of local families.

Toro also is a chaplain at Keeneland race track in Lexington. Every morning during racing season, he walks the horse barns meeting track workers.

Social ministries are “the gate to the church,” and opportunities to share the gospel, Toro said.

Once again, Kentucky WMU welcomed Korea WMU members to the annual meeting. Sook Jae Lee, executive director of Korea WMU, noted that 2008 is the final year of the Kentucky/Korea partnership. How-ever, she hinted that the relationship built over the past three years may continue officially.

Last year, Korea WMU leaders visited Kentucky to observe how WMU provides its summer-long series of camps for children and teens and mother/daughter weekends. “They all said it was an eye-opening experience,” Lee said.

Ongoing efforts to teach English to South Koreans using Bible stories as the foundation of the curriculum continue. Lee noted that some of the Kentucky volunteers who came to Korea last year taught children during the day and tutored adults in their host families at night.

A Friday-evening panel discussion focused on short-term missions.

WMU President Pat Reaves, her husband, daughter and granddaughters were there to discuss the joys of serving together. FamilyFEST, an initiative of national WMU, mobilizes hundreds of volunteers each year to assist local churches with community outreach and evangelism projects. The Reaves family’s most recent trip was to Pittsburgh.

“It will just be a highlight of your Christian life,” Dudley Reaves noted. “It’s an opportunity to grow together.” He added that seeing his grandchildren serve others was proof that “missions education had taken hold.”

Peggy Ballou of Corbin said she has been on 10 mission trips with her grandchildren. She emphasized that a missions destination “doesn’t have to be far away,” adding that hands-on service “is a wonderful way to teach missions” to children.

Ballou’s granddaugter, Chelsea, agreed, saying that through missions education, hands-on service and consistent modeling of Christian attitudes by adults, children and teens will “finally have that light bulb moment” when they understand the importance of sharing Christ with the world.

Mission trips are the norm for the Stan Lowery family, but the director of missions for Nelson Baptist Association said until FamilyFEST, his family usually was “on mission” apart.

Lowery called the trip to Pennsylvania “a great experience ... and an opportunity to serve together.”

Kentucky Baptist Convention President Bill Henard also made a stop at the annual meeting before starting a mission trip to Ukraine. He congratulated WMU for their contributions to and advocacy of the 2007-08 Eliza Broadus Offering which, for the first time in its history, exceeded $1 million.

Henard, pastor of Porter Memorial Baptist Church in Lexington, appealed to WMU members to apply their advocacy skills in support of the Cooperative Program.

“The money in Kentucky churches continues to increase; the bad news is that the percentage of what we are giving to the Cooperative Program is decreasing.”

Noting that more churches, including his own, “are being empowered to go out and do missions,” Henard said the ministries that rely upon CP funds should not be neglected.

If churches would commit to increase their contributions of undesignated funds to the Cooperative Program at a small rate—.32 percent—annually, “it would be amazing to see what we could do,” Henard urged.

The 2009 annual meeting of Kentucky WMU is set for March 28-29 at First Baptist Church of Richmond.