Dec 26, 2018
By Debbie Rod and Valerie Heath
The Good News Seventh Day Baptist Church
goodnewssdbchurch@gmail.com
The Good News Seventh Day Baptist Church, Raleigh-Durham, NC
Our small fellowship is home to an amazing woman—and I want to share her story with you.
Donna Hudson was raised in a Seventh Day Baptist family and community in a remote village in Guyana. Several years ago she, with her husband and children, immigrated to the United States in order to have a better educational opportunity for the children, as well as medical care.
Donna is employed as a housekeeper for one of the resident halls on Duke University campus. As background: Duke University is a highly competitive school in sports—particularly basketball. Each year, during the basketball season, the students erect a shanty town on campus—giant tarp tents where they gather to root their team to victory.
Donna saw those tarps as an opportunity for ministry in her home village in Guyana. She was bold enough to ask one of the founders of the “Das Boot” shanty town at Duke University if she could have the tarps. She explained that tarps like that are so expensive in Guyana—and they would be of great use in the summertime for camps and vacation Bible school. To her delight, the school agreed!
For more information on this, there is a Duke newspaper article written about Donna (www.dukechronicle.com—see the article dated Monday, March 20, 2017).
Donna and some her family return to her village each summer. She prepares well in advance for her trip, sending the donated tarps and many supplies she purchases with her own funds in barrels to her village. Then, she is active in the total ministry programs, as well (camps and VBS).
We have been so encouraged through Donna in our fellowship, that we’re hoping this will be our outreach focus. Donna hopes that there will be a day that someone from our Missionary Society will accompany her in the summer: in her words, “To see what an amazing blessing these children and people are!”
