PRAYER FOR A CONTINENT: A STORY OF ONE LOCAL WOMAN SERVING HER CHURCH IN AFRICA

JACKSON, Mo. -- For years Barbara Popp prayed for Southern Baptist missionaries working and living in Lesotho, Africa, but it wasn't until earlier this year that she made the trip herself to get a clearer picture of how they live.

Popp and her husband, John, visited missionaries Wes and Beth Gestring in January and attended an international prayer conference in Zimbabwe.

Popp will speak about her experiences during the annual Missouri WMU meeting that ends today at Springfield. She will speak again May 1 at First Baptist Church in Cape Girardeau and later in the month in Malden. She has already talked to many church and women's groups since her return, including her own church, First Baptist Church in Jackson.

Lift up Lesotho

Missouri's Baptist churches have had a partnership arrangement since 1987 with African congregations. The program is called "Lift up Lesotho."

During early conversations and seminars about missions in Lesotho, Popp said she was impressed by the needs of the country. "I signed a covenant that I would be a prayer partner but I had no idea where it would lead me."

Her experiences have been "beyond belief," Popp said, which is the theme for the WMU annual conference. Popp served as president of the organization from 1996 to 1999.

Since the prayer partnership formed, Popp has prayed for pastors, churches and missionaries moving to new posts and learning the culture of the African people. A daily listing of requests is published each month for the prayer partners in Missouri.

Early on, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention saw the need to have stateside prayer coordinators for the overseas missionaries. "The missionary force changes and they are by themselves," she said. "God placed them on my heart."

The first missionaries to Lesotho were natives of Missouri and before the couple left they sought prayer partners.

When Alberta Gilpin, former WMU director for the Missouri Baptist Convention, first talked to the missionaries she knew it was "just God's leading. I felt like we needed to be involved," she said.

So the partnership formed. "It's something that God gave us a gift to be developed," Gilpin said.

Popp, who has also been praying for churches in Belarus through another partnership program, developed relationships with all the missionaries who have served Lesotho. During that time, she prayed for them by name and corresponded by mail and e-mail. Typically missionaries agree to a minimum two-year commitment in a particular country, which means learning a new language and culture. Often the mission houses are in remote villages.

The women in Missouri had met the Basotho people in Lesotho by way of videotapes sent back to the states by the missionaries.

"We got to meet the Basotho people who were part of the starting churches, and we became personally acquainted with them in that way," Gilpin said.

Popp never met the missionaries to Lesotho unless they came to the United States. "I just never thought about going," she said. "It just seemed like a remote idea."

But that remote idea turned into a reality this year when she attended a prayer retreat and spent a week with the Gestrings in Lesotho. "This was God's work," she said.

Seeing God's work

Popp heard missionaries speak about their triumphs and challenges working in Africa during the conference. She prayed for specific needs in communities and for people leading churches in local villages. As the audience at the retreat prayed for a specific nation, the missionary serving that nation would stand in an outline of the country on a floor map. By the time every missionary had spoken, the group had prayed for the entire continent.

"I saw God work," Popp said. "It was heart-rending to hear the stories and the needs."

Most of the villagers live in huts with thatched roofs and have limited income. Many raise crops and survive on maize and some occasional meat. "There's no electricity or modern conveniences," Popp said. The women make extra money by selling baskets or weavings.

The churches are cinder-block buildings with just the basics something that serves as a pulpit and benches. The pastor's home is usually a two-room building behind the church.

That Americans are cocooned from turmoil in the rest of the world was evident to Popp as she listened to missionaries speak of civil unrest, poverty and AIDS.

During her week in Lesotho, Popp met other missionaries working in the country. "They cross the barriers to bring the Gospel to all people." They are Great Commission Christians working together as an international community, she said.

A woman and pastor that she'd been praying for separately met and eventually married. During her visit she was able to see the couple and their new child.