HOUSTON?Several Houston-area Southern Baptist pastors are among the signers of a declaration calling for secure borders and a compassionate and just overhaul of the federal immigration system.

The Houston-based U.S. Pastor Council’s “Pastors’ Declaration on Border Security and Immigration Reform” calls for “principled leadership and the laying aside of partisan politics” to address illegal immigration and border security “rapidly, justly and humanely with equal regard” to the law and to the “God-given value of every individual.”

“Holy Scriptures demand that justice and compassion be balanced with neither improperly dominant over the other in our hearts and our laws,” the declaration states on its website at immigrationdeclaration.org.

The declaration calls for the crisis to be addressed in three successive steps?border security, immigration system reform, and a “just process to legal status for specified illegal immigrants.”

It also calls state and national elected officials to end “political posturing and bickering” and begin “genuine dialogue” to find “real solutions to this crisis.”

David Fleming, pastor of Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston and one of the declaration’s signers, said his congregation has a “very large Hispanic population” that is likely sympathetic to illegal residents as well those who vocally support Arizona-style enforcement of immigration laws.

In Scripture, Fleming said he finds support for a “just and compassionate solution” that holds the rule of law and compassion for strangers “in tension.”

He told of his heartbreak in learning about a beloved church employee who let his work visa expire and never renewed it, leaving the church in a dilemma.

“Remember that God is concerned with the rule of law, and God is concerned with the alien and stranger among us,” Fleming said.

The declaration is crucial because the outside world assumes conservative Christians will take a hard-line approach because of secular political leanings, said Fleming, citing a Houston Chronicle article that quoted a state senator and a conservative activist as charging that some evangelical conservatives had been “co-opted” by liberals on the immigration issue and faced losing the White House and possibly their congregations if they didn’t wise up.

“We cannot let others speak for us; we have to speak for ourselves. We have to speak for the Lord?. Otherwise, we will be painted with a broad brush with folks we don’t necessarily want to be associated with,” Fleming said.

David Fannin, pastor of Nassau Bay Baptist Church in suburban Houston and a longtime member of the Houston Pastor Council, said the group thought “it was important for us to make a statement regarding where the country is and where we need to go,” with the first step a secure national border.

On reforming the immigration process, Fannin said, “There’s a lot of low quotas on highly skilled workers and very open quotas on lower-skilled workers and we felt that inequity needed to be addressed.”

Also, Fannin said, those who are here illegally but who have worked and otherwise obeyed the laws should be dealt with differently than those illegal immigrants who commit crimes while here.

“We’ve been very clear that those who have been involved in crimes, they needed to be denied any kind of legal status and that non-citizens should not be receiving non-emergency entitlements,” Fannin said. “It’s almost in line with where Richard Land’s statement is.”

Land, president of the SBC’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in Nashville, Tenn., announced over the summer his support for a border-security first approach that creates a path to legal status for certain illegal immigrants.

Writing in a USA Today newspaper op-ed, Land called for reforms that “respect the God-given dignity of each person,” protects the unity of families, secures borders, and is fair to taxpayers.

“Once agreed upon metrics for a secure border have been met,” Land wrote, “a plan can and should be implemented to bring the 12 million undocumented workers out of the shadows where they are too often exploited and preyed upon by unscrupulous employers and other societal predators.”

Land called it immoral that the government would “ignore its own laws for more than two decades and then one day the government says, ‘Now we are going to enforce the law retroactively.'”

Likening his approach to the term “compassionate conservative,” Fannin said his conservatism notwithstanding, “there’s also some ways in which that means you just can’t be hard-fast.

“If I was in Mexico and the only way I could help my family was to get a job where I could find one, I’m not so sure I wouldn’t do some of the same things, basically, to get food for my family. I understand some of that. But at the same time, I don’t think we can just carte blanche let anybody and everybody come into this country and tap into our resources. I think the statement’s pretty clear that we are not just carte blanche making all the illegal immigrants legal. The statement is pretty strong on how exactly that process ought to be and what should be done.”

As of Aug. 20, more than 350 ministers had signed the declaration.

While working at CompUSA to pay his way through seminary, Buddy Knight learned of a grave danger that led him to his calling?equipping technologically-challenged parents to protect their techno-savvy kids from the dark side of the
World Wide Web.

Knight, a former naval intelligence officer and father of four, recalls selling filtering software to a broken-hearted couple whose 14-year-old son was downloading hard-core Internet pornography. Over the following two weeks, God continued to open Knight’s eyes to that “home front” war, as he served numerous customers searching for protection against online pornography.

When the first couple he’d helped returned 10 days later, angry that the software they’d purchased hadn’t worked, he stumbled on a secondary critical issue.

“Did you change the password?” he asked the clueless couple. He discovered that in their own lack of technological prowess, they had naively trusted the software installation to the teenage son they were trying to protect.

Upon earning his master of divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2001, Knight founded Knight’s Quest Ministries, and developed the “Sex, Kids, and the Internet” seminar and workbook. His materials teach parents how to best protect their children from the torrent of innocence-robbing dangers in cyberspace.

Vicki Courtney, a popular Christian author and speaker on youth culture, calls parents to task on the same issue in her book “Logged On and Tuned Out: A Non-techie’s Guide to Parenting a Tech-savvy Generation.” Courtney, who writes from a parent’s perspective, went from being “tuned out” to “logged-on” when her son, who was playing games on the computer, exclaimed, “I won!”

Courtney asked him if he had defeated the computer, and he responded, “No, I beat some guy in Canada!” Noting the distressed expression that came over his mother’s face, he quickly added, “Don’t worry, Mom. He’s a Christian.”

Courtney advocates tight parental supervision in the use of media. She has been interviewed on Fox News and CNN on how she monitors her children’s activities. Courtney believes she is providing boundaries that her children need, and deep down, want. They have become so accustomed to her reviewing their posts that she occasionally runs across “Hi Mom!” shout-outs in their messages to their friends.

Knight agrees that kids find security in a parent’s close watch, recalling the mom who told him that her 15-year-old asked that the Net Nanny filtering software subscription be renewed to help him resist temptation.

Both authors acknowledge the many benefits of technology for education, communication, and entertainment. But they also admonish parents to:
>learn everything they can about the capabilities of the media products their children use,
>set rules and monitor use,
>teach and train responsible usage,
>lead by example,
>teach and keep on teaching a lifestyle of purity.

If they don’t, parents set their children up for harmful exploitation and risky cyber-behaviors.

Of primary concern to Knight is the overabundance of hard-core pornography and other sexually oriented sites that can flash on a monitor with little effort, or even by a misguided keystroke. Videos, photos, cartoons, and erotic audio books can find their way to a home computer by a simple word search. Slight errors in typing a web address site can take a child (or adult) somewhere they never intended to go. And before it can be stopped, the wall of innocence is breached.

“Kids are being exposed to concepts of ‘fun’ things to do before they are emotionally or spiritually able to handle them. And it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to realize that ‘monkey see, monkey do,'” Knight commented. Cybersex and “sexting” (distributing sexually explicit images of self or others by camera phone or Internet), is a trend among students as young as middle school?a behavior that can damage or destroy reputations.

Johnny Derouen, associate professor of student ministries at Southwestern Seminary, and a former youth pastor for 30 years, echoes Knight’s observation. “When kids hit ages 12-13, there is a 600 percent increase in hormones. That hyper-drive combined with easy access to pornography is almost too much for them. By junior high, 80 percent of teens have looked at hard-core porn. It’s just too easy.”

Derouen added that studies show that it takes three-tenths of a second for an image to become fixed in the mind. “Once it’s there, you can’t delete it,” he said. And pornographers are well aware that age 13 is a “branding age”–if a person starts using something by that time, they have that person for life.

The bad example set by some parents is often part of the problem in Derouen’s experience. “Parents are so hooked themselves, even Christian parents,” he said. He recounted how one teenage boy had been caught purchasing pornography, but his father refused to stop accessing porn himself. When it was discovered that the son had charged about $6,000 on a family account to purchase online pornography, it got the dad’s attention.

“[W]e’ve got to teach kids at a young age to guard their hearts and minds,” Derouen said.

A second cyber-area needing parental involvement is teaching children what they should and should not post on the web. Children do not naturally consider how their posts might damage their character or put them in harm’s way.

In “Logged On” Courtney states, “Trust me when I say that students are ignorant to the fact that any parent, teacher, employer, college admissions office, or anyone for that matter who is not in their immediate circle of online friends would ever view their pictures.”

Courtney describes how, in her research, she repeatedly encountered character-damaging images posted just for fun.

“I can’t tell you how many church kids I have stumbled across who have turned up in the backgrounds of pictures holding beer cans, smoking cigarettes and engaged in other unwholesome acts, unaware that they were leaving a virtual bread crumb trail of their actions.”

“Chat” is another area where children need to be taught to use caution. Kids often innocently share identifying information online, which can lead an online predator to find them. Predators read posts looking for clues, such as school names, colors or mascots; names of teachers; phone numbers or e-mail addresses; or details about weekend plans.

In his material, Knight notes that sexual predators find creative ways to meet children online in chat rooms, or playing against them in on-line gaming such as Xbox LIVE. “They may play against individuals for days, weeks, or months before the predator tries to get more info, but they are there, chatting up our kids,” he states.

On social networking venues like MySpace and Facebook kids post their thoughts, deeds, and misdeeds. Careless posts done just to be cool or funny could haunt them years later when character counts. Knight recounted the story of a young man who was denied a $40,000 scholarship because of posts in the “private” area of his MySpace page.

A third area of concern for parents is the amount of time teens actually spend using technology.

Merritt Johnston is executive director of Sage Ministries, an online and conference ministry for teenage girls and their parents.

She reports, “When surveying the girls who come to our events, it’s not uncommon to find those who are utilizing technology upwards of 18 hours a day. The thought of turning off and tuning out media for even a short period of time is such a foreign concept that I fear most never have the opportunity to hear clearly from God due to the overwhelming noise of media influence in their lives.”

“I didn’t see it coming,” confessed documentary writer Rachel Dretzin regarding the isolating influence of technology on her family’s home-life.

In a web-cam type video format, Dretzin explained how one night she realized that as her family was all together in the same house, they were simultaneously away in other worlds. Her husband and son were working on laptops, and her other children were playing with an iPhone.

Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff co-wrote and co-hosted the Frontline episode “Digital Nation” that premiered earlier this year. The PBS documentary explored the need to “push the pause button” and evaluate the consequences of life in a digital society—both positive and negative.

Dretzin and Rushkoff’s approach somewhat resembled the age-old illustration of the frog in the slowly heating stewpot.

They showed how people are now customarily conducting major parts of their lives in “virtual” reality—business meetings take place in virtual conference rooms, friendships and romances often begin in online ‘worlds’ between avatars (a digital representation of ‘me’). The information presented begs the question, “Is technology taking us to a place we really want to go?”

In the Digital Nation documentary, Todd Oppenheimer, author of “The Flickering Mind,” said, “My concern with this digital media is it’s such short attention span stud, that they get bored. It’s what I call instant gratification education. A thought comes to you, you pursue it. You see a website, you click on it…. All this bifurcates the brain, keeps it from being able to pursue one linear thought and teaches you that you should be able to have every urge answered the minute the urge occurs.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Sherry Turkle noted, “Technology isn’t good or bad, it’s powerful and it’s complicated. Take advantage of what it can do. Learn what it can do. But also ask, ‘What is it doing to us?’ We’re going to slowly, slowly find our balance, but I think it’s going to take time.”

Derouen notes that the more time spent communicating through electronic media, the less time is spent communicating face-to-face. He observes that kids are not getting the practice they need in learning how to discern body language and facial expression. “It’s hurting them at school and in their jobs,” he said.

According to Derouen, though the dangers are serious, parent’s heads are still generally in the sand.

“Most are either ignorant of the issues, or they are busy with their own problems and schedules. They love their kids, but are so pushed by time that they tend to let it slide. When I go to meetings where we’re teaching parents about this, it stuns them. I do see an increase in curiosity about that issue, but I don’t see it carrying over–not many are using Covenant Eyes or Net Nanny.”

Parents wishing to take action to safeguard their family’s media use can find Christian-based help from the following sources:
>Knight’s Quest Ministries, knightsquest.org. Buddy Knight’s materials include: “Sex, Kids and the Internet: A Workbook for Parents of 21st Century Children,” and “Flameproofing Your Kids,” a biblical workbook for helping your kids understand God’s design for sex and marriage. Net Nanny filtering software is available for purchase in his online store. Knight also conducts seminars on these and other related topics.
>Vicki Courtney’s site, loggedonandtunedout.com, contains sample contracts for media use that parents can use as models. Also find links to recommended filtering and monitoring software.
>Sage Ministries, sageministries.org, directed by Merritt Johnston: “reaching, teaching and training young women to impact their communities with the love of Christ.” A Family Media Manifesto can be accessed at their site as a model for parents to develop their own family media plan with rules, goals, and boundaries for Internet use.

FRANKLIN, Tenn.?”A lot of people will say, ‘This guy knows the whole Bible.’

“Well, I really don’t,” Rollin DeLap admits. “The reason they say that is because most people have memorized so little” of “the Word of God.”

DeLap seems to use a capital W when he speaks of “the Word,” attaching a deeper sort of respect to the Bible than mere paper, ink and ancient stories and wisdom.

When he started memorizing various passages from the Word more than 50 years ago, he was a college student who “never dreamed what impact it would have on my life.”

But it led to a career of speaking at campuses across the country, exhorting collegians to put the Word of God in their hearts and to tell others about how faith in Christ, rooted in the Word and enlivened by the Holy Spirit, could change their lives.

DeLap, 71, worked in student evangelism for 15 years with the North American Mission Board, 10 years with the Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources) and 10-plus years with Baptist Student Union ministries at several Texas campuses. The Illinois native is a graduate of Georgetown College in Kentucky and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth.

When DeLap speaks of memorizing the Word, his conversation has an everyman tone and phrasing until it shifts toward eloquence when he quotes a Bible passage?and people’s attentiveness heightens.

“People respond to the Word of God,” DeLap says. “It’s not my authority, but it’s God’s authority. It’s his Word. All I am doing is delivering it from my heart to theirs. Proverbs 9:9 says, ‘Give instruction to the wise and they will become wiser still; teach the righteous and they will gain in learning.'”

DeLap undergirds his point by quoting Deuteronomy 6:6: “These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.”

And 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Most people are shaped by “all the other words in their lives from the culture”?from TV, movies and music, DeLap says. Yet, deep down, they are “hungry just to hear the Word of God coming off somebody’s lips straight to their heart and life.”
Whoever is “teachable to the Word of God … will be the one who is blessed,” DeLap continues. “Psalm 32:9 says, ‘Don’t be like a senseless horse or mule that has to have a bit in its mouth to keep it in line. Many sorrows come to the wicked but his abiding love surrounds those who trust in him.'”

When he was first challenged to memorize Scripture as a college sophomore, DeLap says he focused on three verses a week. After his seminary studies, it became a chapter from the Bible each month for five years. Since then, he has memorized a verse a week, “52 weeks a year.”

“I was a skeptic at first” as an engineering student, DeLap acknowledges. But two verses soon “caused me to think about my life”?Psalm 119:9,11: “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word…. I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

Gradually, DeLap recounts, “The more I put the Word of God into my heart … the more I was interested in what God wanted for my life.” The Bible “began to take on new meaning. I began to pay attention to the content and the context of what the Lord was saying.”

To those who may think Scripture memory is too difficult, DeLap asks, “Well, what’s your name? And who’s your best friend? What’s your phone number? What’s your address? … Why do you remember [these things]? Because they’re important to you.”

“If the Word of God becomes important enough to us,” DeLap says, “we’ll begin to memorize it.”

The aging process has made it more difficult for DeLap to keep his Bible verses sharp. “They’re getting away from me faster and they’re harder to recall,” he says, “but that doesn’t stop me from reviewing a number of them each day and each week.”

DeLap continues to employ the same Scripture memory method he has taught to students over the years: He writes the passage on a small card (2? by 1? inches) and records the reference (where it is located in the Bible, such as Genesis 1:1) before and after the verse or verses he embarks on memorizing. He carries several dozen cards with him in a leather pouch and reviews a number of them in his morning prayer time and whenever he may have a few spare moments during the day.

He has sold a starter kit at his speaking engagements over the years, with each $10 packet containing 36 cards that already have key Scriptures printed on them, several dozen blank cards for people to add their own memory verses, a leather pouch and an instruction booklet titled “Memorize to Evangelize.”

With each Bible passage he memorizes, DeLap initially focuses on the reference. He then adds the first phrase of the passage, continuing to repeat the reference before and after each repetition; gradually, he commits the full passage to memory phrase by phrase.

He reviews his recent memory verses every three to four weeks by rotating a few of the cards in his leather pouch each day. For the hundreds of verses he has memorized over the years, he uses a Life Saver box for a long-term rotating review.
“The more you say [a verse] and the more you review it, the more it becomes a part of your life,” DeLap says. “It soon becomes what I call ‘your verse.’ … It feels like the verse belongs to you.”

It becomes part of a person’s thinking, part of the Word’s transformation of the person’s life, DeLap says. At times, a memory verse gives comfort, guidance, assurance or strength in times of difficulty or crisis, he says, adding that when a verse becomes a bit hazy, the reference often will spark its recall.

And there are times when a verse “begins to explode in your mind and your heart,” DeLap says. “That’s the thrill of the Word?it comes to life.”

When he speaks of the Word, DeLap says it is “not just another book of history or philosophy…. It is the most important message that God has given to all mankind.”

It sets forth not only “principles to live by and to obey” such as the Ten Commandments, Proverbs and Psalms, DeLap says, but it offers people “the best message I know”?salvation drawn from Jesus’ life, his teachings and, particularly, his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead.

At his home in Franklin, Tenn., DeLap has all the letters he has received from college students over the years who have embraced his call to memorize Scripture. The comments he has seen most frequently are “I’ve never felt so close to the Lord” and “I’ve never witnessed so much in my life.”

“They feel emotionally and spiritually close to God,” DeLap, a member of ClearView Baptist Church, says. “He becomes dynamically real and alive like never before.”

When a person feels a spiritual tug to tell loved ones and friends about the value of faith, memorizing Scripture helps lift the fear of “I won’t know what to say,” DeLap continues.

“When they start putting the Word in their lives, they start getting a confidence that they will have something to say,” he says. “Whether consciously or unconsciously, they begin to be free to share their witness for the Lord.” They are increasingly sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s activity “to help people see the way to get into the kingdom of God through the grace of God?by seeing their sinfulness, turning to Jesus for forgiveness and inviting him to dwell in your life now and forever….

“You can hear the Word, you ca

DALLAS?Most of us take for granted the ability to pick up a Bible in our own language and understand what we read. For many people groups around the world, it is not so easy. Criswell College student Huy Than* has been working hard to see that his own people group has access to a Bible in their native language, even if he has to translate it himself.

“God gave him a desire to reach his people group,” Andrew Hebert, Criswell College director of enrollment services, said. “It is inspiring to see the kind of students who come to Criswell from around the world for the purpose of bringing Jesus to the world.”

Than was born to a minority people group in Vietnam, one of the many derogatively referred to as the Montagnard, a term left over from the French colonial days meaning mountain people. His community was very poor. As children, Than and his siblings would go to school and come home to help their mother in the fields.

“We would work in the fields every day,” Than recalled. “It was a difficult life. It was very hard. There were two different kinds of fields?fields with water in them for rice and dry fields. We would grow corn and sweet potatoes and all kinds of vegetables.”

Another difficult aspect of Than’s childhood was growing up without a father. Than’s father worked with American troops during the Vietnam War. When North Vietnam won the war in 1975, the Communists took control of the entire country. Because of his ties with the United States, Than’s father was imprisoned when Than was only 5 years old. The family was only able to visit him two or three times before he disappeared.

“Once when we were there to visit, they told us he had been shot while trying to escape,” Than said. “We asked to see his body, but they said they didn’t know where it was. We have never seen his body. So we don’t know anything for sure.”

Than describes his early life as miserable. He was tormented by fear, thinking that he would also die. He was plagued by nightmares and evil spirits. One day, he went to his great uncle’s house to hear him preach. The great uncle told stories about Jesus casting out demons. He taught Than that Jesus was more powerful than his fear. That night, Than asked his great uncle to pray with him to receive Jesus Christ.

“I remember my great uncle said that if you see an evil spirit or a demon or whatever, just call on Jesus’ name and he will deliver you,” Than said. “I called on Jesus’ name in my mind and heart and the evil spirits disappeared immediately. Since then, I haven’t seen them anymore.”

For the first time in his life, he felt peace.

Than’s family moved from their home in Vietnam to Greensboro, N.C. in 1994. Because of his father’s involvement with the U.S. and with the old government, the Communist leadership was afraid that Than and his brother would grow up to challenge them, following in their father’s footsteps. They pressured the family to leave.

Than’s mother began the necessary paperwork to move to America. Three years after the process had begun, Than’s family finally made it to North Carolina. They were not alone. Thousands of Than’s people group had also made the move, living as refugees in the U.S. He had lived in North Carolina for nine months when an American missionary took him to Toccoa Falls College in southeast Georgia.

“He dropped me off. He said, ‘You’re going to stay here and you’re going to study.’ I said, ‘I don’t know English.’ He told me that I was going to stay and learn English so I could study.”

The first three weeks were discouraging. Than went to class, but could not understand what was said.

“It’s college,” Than said. “It’s not like elementary or middle school. It’s a much higher level of language. It was really difficult because I’d never studied English before.”

After those first three weeks, Than decided to give up. His English did not seem to be improving and he couldn’t understand anything. On his way to chapel one night he decided he was going to call his uncle the next day to come and take him home. As he was praying about it, he heard a voice.

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TYLER?David Mahfood arrived at the church he pastors just in time to watch the building become engulfed in flames.

At approximately 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 16, Mahfood received a phone call from a church member who told him that the church building was on fire. By the time he drove to the church he witnessed with his own eyes as the house of worship burned to the ground.

“It was like a combination of worst nightmares ? the worst sight I’ve ever seen. I don’t think I can adequately describe it,” Mahfood said.

Tyland Baptist Church fell victim to a string of East Texas church arsons. To date, two men have been charged but not yet tried.

“It was heartbreaking for me. We had a beautiful building. In that regard to see the loss was very difficult,” Tyland Baptist Church member Virginia Mayo said.

The churches whose buildings have burned share a unique bond and understanding of both the devastation and healing that takes place after such a malicious act.

“There is a lot of healing across the board,” Mahfood said. “We have people [in the church] who are charter members ? it’s heartbreaking.”

Once the smoke cleared the insurance assessment process started and plans to meet at a temporary location were made. Donations began to pour in to help offset the shortfall Tyland Baptist Church is experiencing due to not having adequate insurance coverage.

The close-knit congregation of 110 meets at Willowbrook Baptist Church, a church located about a mile from their property.

“We were one of many churches offering their facility, and we were glad to do so,” Lloyd McCaskill, pastor Willowbrook Baptist Church said. “If there are things we can do [to help] we will.”

But for church members, while grateful for the generosity of Willowbrook, ‘it’s not the same as when we are in our own building,” Mayo said.

Plans to rebuild began to take shape?a contractor was hired and plans were drawn up. Their contractor, All Star Restoration, is a company accustomed to working with volunteer laborers.

However, in order to restore the church building back to what it was, they are in dire need of volunteer teams to assist with the process.

Initially, Mahfood hoped to have started the rebuilding process in March. Various setbacks has moved that date up to the second week of August.

“We do need volunteers and we hope to have some come forward and help us get our church rebuilt,” Mayo said.

Currently the most critical need is help with framing. Once framing is complete teams are needed to assist with heating and air, drywall, and electrical work.

“We want to rebuild and have a building as pretty as the first one,” Mayo said. “[There are] lots of things to contend with ? and we want it back to its former glory.”

As of July 30, no teams had volunteered to help rebuild. Mayo said the church is prepared to host and provide whatever is needed to the teams who come help.

“We just want to go home, get the job done, restored and back to how we were,” Mahfood said.

“We’re prepared to put teams up in hotels and plan to feed anybody. Whether they come for a week for 10 days at a time, we plan on taking care of whoever comes down,” Mahfood said.

Avoiding debt is the desire of the church, and volunteer labor provides a way for that goal to be met.

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