LeAnn Gunter, associate pastor of Peachtree Baptist Church, teaches a women’s literacy class in Ghana, West Africa.

ATLANTA – A Cooperative Baptist Fellowship church is preparing for its annual missions trip to Ghana, West Africa, through a partnership with a Baptist ministry in Ghana.

Members of Peachtree Baptist Church in Atlanta will travel to Ghana from June 24-July 8, 2005, as partners with Coast for Christ Baptist Ministries. While there, participants engage in a variety of indigenous ministry, according to Robert Walker Jr., the church’s senior pastor. "It’s completely indigenous. We only respond to their basic requests," Walker said.

About five teams travel to Ghana each year from Georgia and neighboring states, each with a different focus, Walker said. While some groups concentrate on medical and construction needs, Peachtree focuses on education. The church hosts a 10-day pastoral training school and a women’s literacy program for more than 60 women, "most of whom had never held a pencil," Walker said. The team also teaches English. "It’s the official language, but most of the village people we work with don’t speak English," Walker said.

The church typically takes a 15-person team, including about seven seminary students in Atlanta, Walker said. With the trip costing about $2,000, the church raises money to subsidize the cost of the trip for its seminary participants. Through a partnership with a local Mediterranean restaurant, Peachtree raised about $1,500 in one night. In April, the church will sponsor a silent art auction, called Art with a Heart, which raises between $2,000 and $3,000.

Walker said the partnership, started nine years ago by the church’s former pastor Dan Hodges, has refocused the church on missions. "It’s made missions real instead of just reading it from a resource book," he said. "It’s also enabled us to have a direct connection with foreign missions. Everybody in the congregation knows someone who’s been to Africa."

Agnes Church, a 39-year member of Peachtree, has been on the Ghana trip three times. A retired nurse, she has helped build a medical clinic and treat people in villages. "Once I saw 145 patients in one day," she said.

She didn’t go on a missions trip until she retired but plans on going on her fourth trip to Ghana next summer. "I love the Ghanaian people so much. For people who have so little to be so joyful and give whatever they have is amazing to me," she said.

Ghana Baptists are also responding to needs in the United States. Robert Owasso of the Ghana Baptist Convention was recently sent to Atlanta to start a Ghanaian church, which will meet at Peachtree.

Individuals or churches interested in participating in Ghana missions should contact Peachtree Baptist Church at (404) 634-2463.

CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.