Altar Call – Opelika-Auburn News

Walter Albritton

October 8, 2017

 

While a few men were kneeling

 

        In recent days our nation’s attention has been focused on a few men who chose to kneel rather than stand during the playing of the national anthem. While those football players were kneeling, several other things were happening. I will mention a few.

        Marcos Wittig, an American missionary, was busy in Medellin, Colombia, converting a dumping ground for garbage and bodies into a soccer field in Acevedo, a community of 80,000 people without a single Christian church. Marcos finds ways to get young people off the street and off drugs and alcohol so they can find new life playing on his soccer teams. Oh, and he is building a church on the site of that former garbage dump.

        Scott Moody and Emma Jane Hunt were busy developing an economic opportunity for poor women in Rwanda who can turn native beads into jewelry.  Moody and Hunt had watched job sites in Rwanda where barefoot women carried bags of cement on their heads for nine hours a day to make two dollars. Their goal: to provide sustainable economic opportunities for women around the world.

        Ron Houp, CEO of GO International, a small missions agency in Wilmore, Kentucky, was busy recruiting volunteers to go at their own expense to assist struggling people in Houston, Texas. Some 200,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by the recent hurricane.

        Tyler Vittetoe, a young Methodist pastor, was busy persuading people to fill buckets with supplies for hurricane victims in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Caring people responded with 150 buckets.

        George Partridge and his wife Linda were busy driving out in the country to serve holy communion to Floy Dawson, a sweet old lady who was dying with cancer.

        Joy Mahoney was busy putting together care packages of battery-powered fans, batteries and solar cellphone chargers to be shipped to her sister Laurie who lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

        Ken Austin, an Air Force veteran and an African-American pastor, was busy providing food, shoes, clothes and housing for the poor in a poverty-stricken section of west Montgomery, Alabama. He is offering young black men a chance to flee the debilitating drug culture, find employment and live a useful life.

        Larry Cochran, an American missionary, was busy ministering to pastors in Llucanayacu, a river village in Peru where Larry is sending a team to help the people plant a church.

        Pam Miller was busy cutting some of her roses so she could take a bouquet to John Howard, a 96-year-old Navy veteran in John Knox Nursing Home. Pam grows roses so she can share them with lonely people.

        Laura Birmingham, a widow in Montgomery, Alabama was busy getting women in her church to sew bandana dresses to be shipped to mission stations in Africa, India and Honduras. So far they have blessed more than a thousand little girls with these colorful dresses.

Jane Boozer, 83-year-old widow of a Methodist preacher, was busy in Decatur, Alabama, visiting homebound folks in her church, a task she performs weekly. She enjoys cheering up old people.

        Coralie McDavid, 91-year-old white widow, was busy cooking lunch for about 50 African-American children and youth in a poor neighborhood in her hometown.

        Darrell Pearson, retired college professor, was busy visiting the sick in area hospitals. It’s what he does for his church every Monday because he enjoys offering hope to people.  

         Jon Mark Glenn, who journeyed last year with a church team to a remote village in Zambia, was busy raising money to help poor village families buy chicken coops. A coop, costing $175, could become a sustainable means of income for a poor African family.

        Why all of the above stories of real people busy doing useful things to help others? This is why: What gets your attention gets you. There are always better choices to make than getting embroiled in an ugly debate about men kneeling on a football field.  + + +