BIG TIMBER, Mont. – A six-man team from the Thousand Hills Baptist Network spent a week in Montana in May.
According to Larry Gibson, director of Missions of the Network (formerly Association), said the team left May 2 and returned May 9. They worked on a new mission project called Sweet Grass Mission, named after the county. It has only been meeting on Sundays for a few months and will be a place summer missionaries can use while serving other Montana churches.
Five men on the team did construction work, while his daughter, Michelle, served as the cook.
This Sweet Grass Mission, located in Big Timber, Mont., is working with other area churches in Montana in various projects.
The Thousand Hills team worked on air conditioning, plumbing, electrical work, dry wall, and floor leveling of a parsonage basement which other teams will use this summer to finish the projects started.
“We accomplished most of the things we wanted to do,” he said.
“We were working in Big Timber, where the plains meet the mountains and the Yellow River runs nearby. Montana is a beautiful area. I found the people very approachable.
“The mission there focuses of the community, which I admire. The average church (congregation) size in Montana, is 30, and Sweet Grass is already running about that,” Gibson said.
Sweet Grass Mission has a building of a closed former church.
Georgia transplants Joel and Wendi Murphy are the pastor and wife for the new church plant.
Gibson is no stranger to mission trips. He has been on more than thirty trips alone that have taken him out of the country.
“I love teaching people. It changes them.”
For some of the northeast Missouri team, the change came in their focus.
“They desire not only to do more missions work, but they want to be active in church planting. They caught the vision to be a mission to the community,” he said.
At least three times, Gibson has done missions ministry in El Salvador.
“We planted one church, and I trained people. I baptized some of them and married some of them. I went back 18 years later and saw a third generation of people serving there.”
One time, he did seven weddings in one Sunday, and some of them changed out of wedding garments into baptism robes
“In El Salvador, people don’t have money to get married. Legal weddings have to have an attorney involved. As a Christian you are not classified as married until after the legal wedding when you have the church wedding. I used to take wedding pictures, and bring the prints back the next time I came,” Gibson said.
One of his children, Daniel, was called to preach on a mission trip and was discipleship and outreach director at Fellowship Baptist in Kirksville, before working with the Missouri Baptist Convention and overseeing Super Summer camps in Missouri.
“I never thought I’d lead an association and train guys for the ministry. Seven men out of our church are in the ministry. I want churches in northeast Missouri to be vibrant doing what they can do,” Larry Gibson said.
