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By SHARON KILPATRICK
Rappahannock Newt Staff Writer
After John Enos had been teaching industrial arts in high school for several years he felt called to do something different. He applied for and was accepted as a foreign missionary for the Southern Baptist Convention.
He was sent to Gambia, a tiny country on the west coast of Africa. The country is predominantly Muslim and most Gambians have no idea what a Southern Baptist is. They have heard that Christian crusaders fought to throw Muslims out of the Holy Land, but they don’t know one protestant denomination from another, he explained.
For the past week he has been visiting Southern Baptist churches in this part of Virginia as part of a World Mission Conference talking about Gambia and his work there. He has been joined by many other missionaries, some returning from foreign countries, some from missionary work in this country.
The Shiloh Baptist Association, with 31 churches in the counties of Rappahannock, Culpeper, Madison and Orange, sponsored the conference, and the missionaries spent the past week visiting with different groups explaining what they do and answering questions.
Many, like Mr. Enos, will be returning to their missions. Others are retiring. For all of them, explaining at home what they are doing in the field is part of what they were called to do.
They explain that they are in the missionary field because of missionaries who visited their home churches. Perhaps future missionaries in the churches of the Shiloh Association will go out because of their visits. They report people are very interested in learning what they do.
Mr. Enos is director of the Baptist Community Center just outside Gambia’s capital of Banjul. Missionaries must have skills in order to get a work permit to come into the country, he said. The Baptist Center offers dental clinics, public health workers, literacy training, opportunities for young people to engage in sports, and Mr. Enos, himself recruits local women to teach others batik and tye dying, so they will have products to sell to increase the revenue in their homes.
He said he has not encountered animosity from Muslim leaders, and the men can see the advantage of their women learning these skills, while the women are attracted because of the opportunity to get to
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