Passion for missions flamed by women a century apart

Jacksonville (FBC)—Ann bounced down dusty roads in a horse and buggy. Sarah breezes through cloudless skies in gleaming airplanes.

Ann painstakingly dipped a pen into an inkwell and handwrote letters, hoping her correspondence would ultimately reach her partners in the faith. Sarah pushes a button on her computer and reaches hundreds of people instantly.

Ann sat quietly as a man read her written report to the assembled group. Sarah creatively uses the persuasion of her soft words and the power of modern technology to share her message.

The times have changed, but the two women share a passion and vision that span the ages.

Ann Bailey, appointed as Florida Baptists’ first secretary for women’s mission work in 1882, traveled throughout the then-rugged state in an effort to educate and inspire women in their missions awareness and commitment. Although she only served four years before her death in 1886, her legacy of “awakening ... the missionary spirit among the Baptist Christian women throughout the State” reverberates still today—in lives like that of Sarah Fitzgerald.

“Sarah is a strong leader, a woman of prayer and dedication to a task when God lays something on her heart,” said Cindy Goodwin, director of Florida Baptists’ Women‘s Missions and Ministries Department.

A member of First Baptist Church, Belleview, Fitzgerald traces her missions commitment to the mid-eighties when she was dating her future husband, Lawrence, who was actively involved in local missions. After the two married, Fitzgerald found a mentor in missions in a friend who began to “flame my heart for international missions.”

Then, in 1998, five Florida Baptist women, led by Goodwin, boarded a plane for Mozambique. Their mission was to meet the missionaries and local pastors and learn better how to support them as prayer partners as well as help them discover possible new ministries. Perhaps unknowingly seeking to be one in spirit with her missions predecessor Bailey, Fitzgerald “volunteered for the more rigorous part of the trip,” according to Goodwin, and willingly traveled throughout Mozambique into remote areas, sometimes even sleeping in a tent.

Seeing firsthand the “deep needs of the people, my heart was there,” said Fitzgerald.

“When she returned to her church, she immediately began sharing her experiences and helping her church see the needs and how they could be involved. I believe that God so impressed her of the need that she could not not encourage others to get involved,” recalled Goodwin.

The Belleview congregation responded “deeply to the message,” according to Fitzgerald, who enjoys strong support in her missions commitment from both her husband and her pastor, Ron Walker. The church, an International Mission Board-designated Global Priority Church, not only strengthened its commitment to Mozambique but also has adopted three international people groups to pray for and has taken other international mission trips. Closer to home, the church partners with a young church in West Virginia and is involved in local and state missions, including a mission trip to Miami this summer.

Fitzgerald also goes beyond her own church to share her missions message. For the past four years, she has served as a regional consultant for Florida Woman’s Missionary Union. In that role she has encouraged and equipped women’s missions leaders in five associations.

A quiet person by nature, Fitzgerald “invests herself in other people so that they can see and experience what she has seen and experienced in missions,” said Pastor Walker.

Thankful for her mentors in missions, Fitzgerald seeks to do the same for others. “It’s such a blessing to talk to others about missions, to pray with them, and to see them develop their own missions lifestyle,” she said.

The passion for missions among Florida Baptist women, begun as a tiny flickering flame more than 100 years ago by Ann Bailey, continues to burn brightly today because of the sacrificial commitment of Sarah Fitzgerald—and countless other Florida Baptist women on mission.