Steve and Nancy James travel to medical clinics throughout Haiti, offering training and support to staff. Photo courtesy of the Jameses

ATLANTA – Far from their home in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina, Nancy and Steve James are immersed in heat and the tropical atmosphere of Haiti.

The Jameses serve as Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Global Missions AsYouGo affiliates. As affiliates the Jameses are self-supporting, but they have access to benefits provided by CBF Global Missions, including physical, emotional and spiritual support, training opportunities and being part of a peer team. This infrastructure, which is funded by gifts to the CBF Offering for Global Missions, allow the Jameses to draw on Fellowship resources and relationships.

"We really feel like we are a part of a team that surrounds us and empowers us every step of the way, from our church family to the broader Fellowship," said the Jameses. "We have had many moments where we have felt the presence and power of Jesus working in the lives of those with whom we live and serve."

The Jameses seek to be the presence of Christ in Haiti by sharing their faith and help to provide needed medical services.

"The goal is to go beyond curing the fever and to have Jesus go into the places in their hearts that need forgiveness and reconciliation," said Steve, who has a medical degree from Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara in Mexico.

Skilled medical professionals in Haiti are often overworked and poorly paid and hospitals lack the proper infrastructure to function. According to the Jameses, 80 percent of Haitians are too poor to pay for medical care. Doctors receive no income subsidies from the government, local churches or foreign sources and are forced to focus on wealthier patients in order to earn an income.

Serving as an extension of their encourager church in Burnsville, N.C., the Jameses have three major goals: network people by understanding the concrete needs in Haiti, encourage staff at medical clinics as well as Haitian Christians and empower by sharing medical and spiritual training.

Despite cankered dirt roads and their transportation struggles, Steve travels to different clinics to offer medical assistance. During one visit, he saw the Lord’s transforming power come over a man who was thrashing and babbling. As Steve touched the man and prayed for the Lord’s power, another doctor prepared a shot to calm him and the people in the waiting room broke into a hymn, which moved the man to silence as the people sang.

"We came to Haiti to be a help to people, and we found out what Jesus wanted us to do was be transformation," Steve said. "Without Jesus’ transformation nothing is going to progress."

To give to the Offering for Global Missions, which supports the infrastructure of CBF Global Missions, go to www.thefellowship.info/landing/giving.icm. The national goal for 2006-2007 is $6.32 million.

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.