Andrea Young doesn’t teach Acteens anymore, but, during the 34 years she did, she invested in a lot of young women.
“I remember this one young lady from back then that I was absolutely sure I was having no impact on,” Andrea said. “This woman is in her early 40s now, and she’s gone on to live on the mission field with her husband.”
The fact that she had gone wasn’t the surprising part, Andrea said—the surprise was that the missionary’s mother said it all started in Acteens.
“Her mother told me something about her giving credit to ‘what I learned with Mrs. Andrea,’” she said.
That’s the surprise many women who teach Girls in Action and Acteens get over the years. They, along with others who serve in their WMU groups, hear stories of girls who have gone on to be involved in missions, and many of them can track it back to their church’s WMU-led missions education.
“WMU is just a part of our church—it’s a lot of who we are,” said Andrea, a member of First Baptist Church of Bolivar, Tennessee. “We’ve had several young people go on and serve the Lord in different capacities, and I’ve had several say, ‘It’s what I heard in missions programs when I was young that set me on this path.’”
Sue Harvey, a member of Philadelphia Baptist Church in Etta, Mississippi, said that kind of missions investment is woven into the fabric of her church, too.
“I don’t know how far WMU goes back here, but I do know I had two grandmothers who, along with other ladies of the church, have had WMU going for at least the last hundred years,” she said. “As long as there has been a Philadelphia Baptist Church, there has been WMU at Philadelphia Baptist Church.”
They’re a small, country church, but they’re missions-minded, Sue said. They make blankets for their nearest crisis pregnancy center. They have canned-good drives for the area food pantry. They get ideas from WMU materials—like the need for girls in Third World countries to have reusable sanitary items—and they do everything they can to meet the need.
“We try to be proactive,” Sue said.
And when they heard about the Walk of Faith prayer garden being built on New Hope Mountain in Birmingham, they were ready to help. The walk recognizes missions heroes past and present with bricks given in their name. The funds raised go to support the ongoing work of WMU.
“When we saw it was to raise money for WMU, we knew we wanted to be a part of that,” Sue said. “So we decided to have a fundraiser breakfast. We made biscuits and gravy and sausage and said, ‘Come out and support WMU with a donation.’ And they did. It’s a generous church. Everybody digs deep.”
Andrea said their church wanted to do their part to support WMU, too—it’s a part of their DNA and their legacy.
“That’s why we got a brick—we knew it was something we needed to do to keep the legacy going,” she said.
For more information on how to support WMU by honoring a missions hero or your church’s WMU group with a brick, visit wmufoundation.com/walkoffaith or call the WMU Foundation at (205) 408-5525.