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California Southern Baptists Begin Search for New Executive Director
at age seventy-one, she has forty years of teaching experience. In addition to teaching, Ebert also worked for the National Archives and was a chaplain for a disaster relief chainsaw team. Ebert got her start in SBDR in 2017 during Hurricane Harvey in Houston, Texas.
“Let them take care of you; they are safe,” Ebert told the girl and her mother, gesturing to the help station in the center of the waiting hall.
Ebert and her team are one of twelve Southern Baptist volunteer teams that have traveled from the United States to Eastern Europe to serve Ukrainian refugees. To date, Southern Baptists have donated more than $8 million to Send Relief and the International Mission Board (IMB) to go toward Ukrainian relief efforts.
Romanian volunteers are at the station around the clock. Train tickets are free for Ukrainians.
One volunteer, Klara, said at the beginning of the crisis, she worked twenty-hour shifts as the fire station’s red buses ferried weary Ukrainian refugees from the border of Romania and Ukraine. Most of the volunteers went to the border, Klara said. Not many thought to come and assist Ukrainians who were boarding trains to take them to cities across Europe.
Donning their yellow hats, vests, and volunteer badges, Ebert, and her SBDR teammates Diana Scoggin from First Baptist Camdenton, Missouri, and Terry James from King’s Trail Cowboy Church in Whitewright, Texas, visited the train station with Marcela, a Romanian Baptist, to pass out juice boxes and pray for refugees waiting for trains.
For eighteen years, Ebert taught fifth grade. After learning that the girl was ten years old and that she was in fifth grade, Ebert shared how she treasured those years teaching fifth graders.
“Leaving, at ten years old, you may have had to leave your pet. At ten years old, all your safety is with your school, your home, your parents,” said Ebert. “If she has a father, he’s there fighting. There’s no adventure. There’s just grief and sadness and that feeling of leaving all that you knew.”
Ebert asked the mother and daughter if she could pray for them. Before leaving, Ebert told the ten-year-old she was beautiful.
“No, you are beautiful,” the girl told her.
Ebert noticed an older refugee woman sitting a few seats down from the mother and daughter. She sniffled and wiped away tears.
The night before, four rockets landed near this woman’s home. One of them exploded, but she didn’t know what happened to those who were near the blast. She was worried about the people who remain in her town.
Though there are no alarms or bombs on this side of the border in Suceava, she said she still hears ringing in her ears. The sirens are not abating in her memory.
“Tell her she is safe now,” Ebert told a translator.
Mickey Ebert leans in to pray for a Ukrainian woman. Ebert always asks if she can pray for those she interacts with. Ebert is the leader of a team of Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers who represent the Baptist state conventions of Missouri, California, and the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention. Image Courtesy of IMB
“When you turn on the TV you see war; when you turn on your phone, you see the war. You can’t escape the reality; you can’t get over it. You can’t just ignore it because you have no way to ignore it,” the woman told Ebert.
“She even prays for the Russians to be healthy because you have to pray even for the enemy,” Klara translated. “It doesn’t matter. No one should die.”
Jesus said you should love your enemy, the woman explained, and she was raised to believe that.
Ebert then asked to pray for her.
“Earlier we prayed for health; now we pray for peace,” the woman said.
Ebert and the older woman bowed their heads. Ebert voiced a prayer asking for peace for the woman and for a silencing of the sirens in the woman’s mind.
“I prayed for her, and I prayed for the Russian people,” Ebert said. “I prayed that God would hold her in His hands and give her a peace over [what’s happening in] Ukraine, but also a peace in her heart and a peace in her mind.”
A version of this article was published in Baptist Press on April 13, 2022.
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Pastor Dale Rogers (left) prays with Fred Hall before baptizing him on Baptism Sunday, April 24, 2022. Image Courtesy of Dale Rogers via Twitter @DaleRogers5829
Triple-Stroke Survivor Leaves Hospice, Joins Hundreds Baptized on Baptism Sunday
BY DIANA CHANDLER
Widower Fred Hall had suffered three strokes and was in hospice when his pastor Dale Rogers visited in January.
“He was pretty bad off. They didn’t think he was going to make it. He couldn’t hardly lift his head or anything,” Rogers told Baptist Press. “He got better and I went in there one time to visit him and caught him crawling on the floor.
“I said what are you doing? He said, ‘Well, I can’t walk yet, but I can sure crawl.’ He told me there, that when he got back, able to do it, he wanted to be baptized. And I had a fifteen-yearold who had just received the Lord, and (Hall) wanted to be baptized with him.”
Rogers baptized Hall on April 24 at Dunham Woods Baptist Church as Southern Baptists nationally celebrated Baptism Sunday, an official Southern Baptist Convention calendar observance.
“Since he could walk, he wanted to be baptized to rededicate his life. He wanted everybody to see that just because he was in hospice, doesn’t mean it was it, it was over with. God just moved in his life and brought him out of hospice. After three strokes, he got in the pool and he was able to get out of the pool.”
Rogers considers Hall, in his 80s, a miracle.
“Fred Hall, he’s just one of them miracles that happened to us,” Rogers said. “He’s my door
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