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God’s chastising called Judy Morris to missions
Mike Creswell_ь_ь, BSC
October 20, 2010
3 MIN READ TIME

God’s chastising called Judy Morris to missions

God’s chastising called Judy Morris to missions
Mike Creswell_ь_ь, BSC
October 20, 2010

When she retired after

teaching fifth grade for 32 years, Judy Morris did not immediately start doing

mission trips, though in earlier years she had vowed to do so after

retirement._ь

Long active in First Baptist

Church, Siler City, missions involvement was not on her calendar.

She recalls vividly the

moment her commitment changed. _ь

It was soon after Hurricane

Katrina destroyed much of Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005. At 6 a.m. one

Sunday she was working the crossword puzzle in the newspaper when suddenly

somebody said, “You’re making excuses!”

“I looked around and there

was no one,” she said. The voice continued, “You’re making excuses. When you

were working, you said you would love to do things like help with Katrina, but

you couldn’t because you said you were working; you’d love to do so after you

were retired.

“Now you’re saying it’s hot

down there, but you just got back from Las Vegas and it was 107 degrees out

there.

“You say you have a bad

back, but you’re getting ready to go to New York on a tour. You have the time

now. What’s your excuse?”

“He very firmly told me, ‘If

I tell you to do something, I will empower you to do it. Don’t worry

about these little things. That will work out,’“ she said.

“It was a life-changing

experience,” she said.

She soon got trained by N.C.

Baptist Men in mass feeding and made two trips to serve in Gulfport, Miss.,

along with some 40,000 other North Carolina Baptist volunteers who responded

over two years.

“It was an eye-opening

experience to see the equipment, the organization and all the Baptists with the

yellow shirts on,” she said._ÑŒMorris wept as she recalled how they would be

walking through a store, wearing their yellow Baptist Men Disaster Relief

T-shirts.

“People would come up to us

with tears in their eyes, thanking us for being there,” she said.

She wept again as she

recalled how they stood with members of First Baptist Church and sang, “Because

He Lives.”

“When we stood to sing,

those people had lived through what we were singing about. They were singing

with such joy. It was awesome. It was just awesome,” she recalls.

She recalled being impressed

by the Bible study led by Chuck Register, then the pastor of First Baptist

Church, Gulfport. Register is now executive leader for the Church Planting and

Missions Development Group at the Baptist State Convention. “We are so

fortunate to have him with us,” she said.

This summer Morris led a

10-member team to Connecticut to help a Baptist church there reach out to their

community. Four years after she quit making excuses, Judy Morris is still sold

out to missions.

“People don’t know until

they’re touched by it,” she said.

N.C. Baptist Men are able to

train, organize and coordinate for disaster relief and carry out 13 other

ministries involving men, women and children because they are supported through

the North Carolina Missions Offering.

(EDITOR’S NOTE — Creswell

directs stewardship efforts at the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina.)