LITTLE ROCK – More than 400 people from 54 churches spent Saturday, May 17, at the Little Rock Zoo having fun and learning about missions as they attended Family Missions Day, an event sponsored by the Missions Team at the Arkansas Baptist State Convention (ABSC).
During the missions discipleship event, participants learned about missions and unreached people groups through a scavenger hunt, crafts, prayer cards, and presentations from missionaries. The event was an opportunity to show attendees they can be on mission every day, even at the zoo.
Participants throughout the day completed various activities which earned them a Family Missions Day patch. Arkansas Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) President Laura Bramlett of First Baptist Church in Hope was one of the several missionaries set up at the pavilion, where participants could visit their booths, learn about their mission, and earn a stamp.
Bramlett said the event allowed them to pair a fun day at the zoo with missions. Attendees got to walk around and see animals, but also got to talk to people that may have lived in countries that had those animals, hear what God is doing in those countries, and see how they live their everyday life as a missionary. She said the event highlighted how “missions can be a part of your everyday life.”
Additionally, participants were tasked with finding four people located throughout the zoo that represented different unreached people groups from Egypt, India, Kosovo, and Iran. As part of the missions/zoo scavenger hunt, attendees also had to find five specific animals and learn some interesting facts about them.
Roger Rucker, who represented one of the unreached people groups on Saturday, said, “All our future workers are going to be these going through today. …Mission events like this start moving people that way and it is amazing how much it touches the heart of the parents too.” Rucker and his wife, Linda, lived 30 years in Egypt, serving in the Middle East.
Jennifer Weaver of White Hall First Baptist Church said it is important to teach youth missions discipleship.
“I think it’s so important to start them early, learning about missions, because that’s what they are as soon as they know Christ – they are little missionaries,” Weaver said. “This (Zoo Day) is a missions education moment where they get to learn more about what God is doing in Arkansas, in the nation and also internationally. This is such an important event.”
Weaver, along with Michelle Lawrence of Woodland Heights Baptist Church in Conway, led children in crafts at one of the zoo day booths. The crafts were geared toward encouraging missionaries and then also encouraging the children to be missionaries at home. They had door hangers to pray for neighbors and prayer pages.
“We’re all about encouraging others and sharing God’s love,” Weaver said.
Jamie Moore of New Morrow Baptist Church in Searcy said this was their first time attending Family Missions Day at the zoo.
“We’ve really been enjoying it. We got something in the mail and we just all decided to come as a church,” she said. “It’s been awesome seeing people stopping and praying for others everywhere.”
“You can talk about Him everywhere. … At that age, sometimes you’re scared to talk about Him, but when you’re out with a group and everybody just loves God, talking about Him and praying together, it makes it a normal thing,” she said. “It brings the churches together, too. We’re meeting people from other churches. It’s just amazing to be able to see so many people together and then your church family also grows closer coming places together.”
Family Missions Day at the zoo was made possible through the generous gifts of Arkansas Baptists through the Dixie Jackson Arkansas Missions Offering and the Cooperative Program.
