Ohio Youth Missions Trip
ELYRIA, Ohio—The Hebron Association of Regular Baptist Churches in Northern Ohio has held its second combined youth missions trip. After the great success of the first missions trip four years ago in Utah, the team decided to return there for Project Utah 2010, cooperating with Baptist Mid-Missions.
Seven Hebron churches combined to send 73 teens and leaders to minister to and with eight Baptist churches in the Salt Lake City Valley. The ministry included canvassing, survey work, VBS and backyard Bible clubs, work projects, and Sunday ministry.
Teens experienced different dynamics of the Baptist churches participating in the week, as a variety of rural and urban settings exist in the Salt Lake Valley. The youth teams rotated between the growing and established churches, to the smaller churches in the highly conservative rural LDS communities where 95 percent of residents are Mormon. Some groups were able to participate an initial canvass for a brand new church plant with Paul and Laura Fulks. Paul, who attended First Baptist Church in Elyria as a young person, was called to his ministry as a result of his missions trip to Salt Lake City.
The group prepared for their ministry by completing a healthy list of requirements leading up to the trip, followed by six hours of training in Salt Lake City. Students toured Mormon Square and a 21,000-seat Mormon conference center and watched informational films produced by the LDS church.
Dave Burman, youth pastor at First Baptist, Elyria, says the trip saw much fruit in the lives of participants. “Countless contacts were developed for the Baptist churches in Salt Lake City, and in communities darkened by a Satanic lie, the gospel message was boldly proclaimed,” Burman says.
Participating churches include Camden Baptist, Wellington; Calvary Baptist, Sandusky; First Baptist, Elyria; First Baptist, LaGrange; First Baptist, Wellington; Grace Baptist, Port Clinton; and Grace Baptist, Westlake.
Thirty churches fellowship with the Hebron Association of Regular Baptist Churches, a local group organized five years prior to the founding of the GARBC in 1932.
