News & Reports – June 2024

The Online Edition of the June 2024 BFM News & Reports is available at the link below. This month, we are featuring our Veteran Missionary Pensioners.
*Remember you can click on any headline to view the post/story on our website. To view a VMP’s profile online, click on their picture.


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JUNE IS VETERAN MISSIONARIES PENSIONERS OFFERING MONTH

JUNE IS VETERAN MISSIONARIES PENSIONERS OFFERING MONTH
[or formerly known as FOUNDERS MONTH OFFERING]

Please give as generously as you can for the continuing support of our Veteran Missionaries Pensioners

Contribute to the 2023 VETERAN MISSIONARIES PENSIONERS OFFERING

“Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to everyone who is to come.” Psalm 71.18

June is the month for appealing for our Veteran Missionaries Pensioners Offering. And, we are fervently appealing to you on their behalf. Please read this appeal with an open heart, asking God how he wants you to give – and to give you something to give.

What is the Veteran Missionaries Pensioners Offering? That name may be a little new and unfamiliar to you, but it is the same offering that has before been called Founders Month Offering. They are two names for the same offering and are used for the same purpose. We will continue to link this offering to the Founders Month Offering name, but we do want to make our Veteran Missionaries Pensioners Offering more prominent.

Here’s why: this offering is allocated to providing service pensions for our Veteran Missionaries Pensioners. We have a number of Veteran Missionaries who have given a substantial portion of their lives in missionary service for Christ in partnership with BFM. BFM gives them a modest service pension as a token of our love and gratitude for their service.

However, their pensions are NOT supplied from the monthly Missionary Support Fund that supplies the needs of our current active missionaries. The pensions for the Veteran Missionaries Pensioners are funded from a separate investment account that has been established for that sole purpose. And, all the funds that are allocated and deposited into that Veteran Missionaries Pension Fund are disbursed for that purpose.

Currently, we have six (6) pensioners, and every month, there is a disbursement of $11,590.00 to fund their service pensions. That amount, even on a good month, is double the amount of growth we receive on the investment base in that account.

And, as a side note here – you know what a hit investment accounts have taken over the course of last year, and that decline/loss activity only makes our attention and generosity toward our Veteran Missionaries Pensioners all the more urgent.

Here is another way we are going to expand our participation in this Veteran Missionaries Pensioners Offering. We will continue to ask you to give your most generous gifts in the memory of our founders: H. H. Overbey and Z. E. Clark.

But, we want to expand it further by encouraging you to give gifts both:

  • “In Memory Of…” someone who is now with the Lord … and
  • “In Honor Of…” someone who may still be living, but whose love and service for BFM you would like to honor. It can be any faithful servant of the Lord.

For example: you could give your most generous gift “In Memory Of…”

  • Hafford Overbey and Z. E. Clark
  • a former BFM missionary who is now with the Lord
  • a former Director of BFM who is now with the Lord
  • a family member, loved one, or friend who is now with the Lord

Or, you could give your most generous gift “In Honor Of…”

  • a current BFM Veteran Missionary Pensioner
  • a current missionary
  • a current Director, pastor, or other servant of the Lord whom you wish to honor

All of these gifts will be allocated to and deposited in the Veteran Missionaries Pensioners Fund and will be used to continue to support them in their senior years.

So, who are you thinking of right now – either with the Lord or still serving the Lord – whom you would like to memorialize or honor with an offering that will be used to fund the service pensions of our Veteran Missionaries Pensioners?

Pray about and prepare your most generous offering.

You can contribute your Veteran Missionaries Pensioners Offering via:

And, would you prayerfully consider making your gift toward our Pensioners recurring? Our disbursements of $11,590 toward supplying their modest service pensions recur every month!

And, as always, thank you for giving to the Lord!

– your BFM Directors

Baptist Faith Missions Veteran Missionaries Receiving Pensions


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MEET YOUR “VETERAN MISSIONARIES PENSIONERS” BENEFICIARIES OF YOUR “FOUNDERS MONTH OFFERINGS”

We are frequently asked: “What are you doing to continue giving our Veteran Missionaries assistance, especially financial assistance, in their senior years? How do you assist them? Through what means do you assist them? How can I help assist them?”

The short answer to that question for those who served long enough to vest into our traditional retirement/pension plan is: “We continue to honor and assist them by giving them a monthly ‘service pension’ for the remainder of their lives – and for which spouse may outlive the other.”

This is just a small way we can honor them and show our love and appreciation to them for the years of service they gave to Christ in partnership with BFM.

Many of you have known our Veteran Missionary Pensioners for decades. You have not only known them, but you have loved them, fellowshipped with them, served with them, hosted them in your churches and in your homes, and have contributed to their missionary support.

We still have six current Veteran Missionary Pensioners to whom we are giving this honor:

[Click on their names to learn more about their missionary service and where they are now.]

The “Veteran Missionary Pensioner” account is not funded through the regular monthly offerings given to BFM, but rather through a separate investment account that is established for that purpose.

Currently, every month, there is a disbursement of $11,590.00 to fund their service pensions. That amount, even on a good month, is double the amount of growth we receive on the investment base in that account.

Would you help us with this expression of our love for them? When you designate your offerings for ‘’Veteran Missionaries Pension’ or for ‘Founder’s Month Offering’ [they are the same], they will be applied toward the continuing and on-going financial honor and support of these faithful life-long servants of Christ.

Your missionaries and their families have served and sacrificed greatly on your behalf during their productive years.  Please make a small financial sacrifice for your missionaries in their senior years by giving to the Founders Month Fund.

And, there’s MORE you can do to encourage them! Pray for them!  Reach out to them through every means you can (call, write, email), and let them know you still appreciate them and their service.  They would love to hear from you personally, or from your Sunday School class, or your church’s Pastor/leadership.

Thank you for sharing with them!

You can make a secure donation online with a check or credit card. Just click the “Give” tab on our homepage at www.bfmnow.org.

Click here to give now or you can mail your offering to:
BFM, c/o George Sledd
P.O. Box 471280
Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280


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News & Reports – June 2023

The Online Edition of the June 2023 BFM News & Reports is available at the link below. This month, we are featuring our Veteran Missionary Pensioners.
*Remember you can click on any headline to view the post/story on our website. To view a VMP’s profile online, click on their picture.


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News & Reports – June 2022

The Online Edition of the June 2022 BFM News & Reports is available at the link below. This month, we are featuring our Veteran Missionary Pensioners.
*Remember you can click on any headline to view the post/story on our website. To view a VMP’s profile online, click on their picture.


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VMP: Sheridan & Anita Stanton

Sheridan and Anita Stanton served in partnership with BFM in Peru for 32 years from April 1983 to October 2014.

Anita and I were missionaries in Peru from April of 1983 until October of 2014 (32 years). 

Here’s a timeline of the major events:

  • 1973 I graduated from High School and began studies at Lexington Baptist College.
  • 1974, June 7th Anita and I were married.
  • 1977 I graduated from LBC and our daughter Leah was born.
  • 1978 I was ordained to the Gospel Ministry and began pastoring the Jordan Baptist Church of Sanford, Fl.  Also, our son, Joshua, was born.
  • 1982 resigned the pastorate of Jordan Baptist to begin preparations to go as missionaries to Peru under the authority of Jordan Baptist and legally and financially aided by Baptist Faith Mission.
  • 1983, April – we arrived in Iquitos, Peru. Leah was five years old, and Joshua was four when we arrived in the Northern Jungle town of Iquitos, where the Amazon River begins. They grew up in Peru and came back to the States for college. Leah and Joshua are both grown now, married with children, and live in the United States.
  • We lived for seven years in two different jungle towns of Peru: Iquitos and Pucallpa. Those were our “formative” years as missionaries. The Lord used us to start our first church in Pucallpa and then assume the directorship of the Pucallpa Baptist School (begun by former Missionaries, Del and Ada Mayfield). Anita and I worked with the school for five years and the Lord blessed with an increase in enrollment from 250 students to 870 in our last year there. 
  • My wife, Anita, (a graduate of the University of Kentucky) spent years in Peru developing Sunday school curriculum for our churches. Many of her materials have been used as Religion Curriculum in the Peruvian Public schools. She completed the curriculum series for children of all ages. She managed her home and took great care of her husband and children! She has always been a Proverbs 31 wife and mother.
  • During the late eighties, the terrorist situation created an extremely difficult time for missionaries in Peru.  We felt it best to move to the capital city of Lima at that time. There we stayed for the next seven years and were able to help start three more churches.
  • It was also while in Lima I began traveling and teaching Bible classes in five different cities of Peru. This quickly turned into the Baptist Institute of Biblical Studies, which we continued until we left Peru in 2014.
  • When our children returned to the USA to begin college, Anita and I felt it would be best to move and work out of the town of Huánuco, 6300ft above sea level in the Andes Mountains. The main reason for moving there was because of the town’s location in the center of Peru. The location allowed us to have our Institute classes there instead of me traveling all over the country. Because of the towns central location our pastors could travel to us. The first classes there were an immediate success in that they not only received the teaching but now Pastors had a venue for fellowship that they had never had before. This large-scale association significantly helped the unity among our pastors and preachers in Peru.
  • Jungle, coast, or the Andes Mountains; everywhere we worked in Peru, we were always involved in church planting. The first church started was Iglesia Bautista Jordan in the jungle town of Pucallpa and the last church organized was the Iglesia Bautista Calvario in the Andean Mountain town of Huánuco. During those years we were directly involved in the planting of seven churches and indirectly with about thirty (working with Peruvian missionaries in starting new works).
  • For most of those years I prepared course materials for the Bible Institute, pastored the mission we were involved with at the time. I also traveled around Peru to visit and encourage the churches and missions.
  • 2008 I graduated with a master’s degree in Biblical Counseling from Luther Rice Seminary
  • 2012 I graduated with a PhD in Christian Counseling from the Louisiana Baptist University.
  • Hosting mission teams became a ministry for us also. Some years we would host two or three teams a year. These mission teams were always a blessing to our work in Peru. 
  • People very often refer to missionaries’ great sacrifices in leaving their homes in the USA, but we never considered our ministry in Peru as a sacrifice; that is until our grandkids came along. We are thankful for webcams, faster airplanes, and internet phones!
  • In 2014 the Berea Baptist Church of Hiddenite, NC extended a call for us to come and be their pastor.  After thirty-two years (half my lifetime) we knew it was God’s will for us to leave the mission field of Peru and come to North Carolina to continue the rest of our years in ministry here. The Lord has been very gracious to us here and we have grown to love the dear Saints of Berea Baptist very much.
  • 2018 the directors of Baptist Faith Mission invited me to serve as a director of BFM. I enjoy the opportunity to serve in this capacity and in some small way, give back to the ministry of Baptist Faith Mission in helping local churches send and maintain their missionaries on the foreign field.
  • Our view of life is that neither the United States nor Peru is our home, but as the Bible teaches us, we are only pilgrims in this world and citizens of a heavenly city. To God be the glory!

Sheridan & Anita Stanton
224 S. Center St
Taylorsville NC 28681
828-962-0149
sestantonperu@hotmail.com

When you designate your offerings for ‘Veteran Missionaries Pension’ or for ‘Founder’s Month Offering’ [they are the same], they will be applied toward the continuing and on-going financial honor and support of these faithful life-long servants of Christ.

Click here to give now or you can mail your offering to:
BFM, c/o George Sledd
P.O. Box 471280
Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280


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VMP: Asa Mark & Lucia Bratcher

ASA MARK & LUCIA BRATCHER

I served as a missionary in partnership with BFM for 22 years, but I have practically associated with BFM since I was 3 years old. That’s when I arrived in the Amazon Valley with my godly parents on July 15, 1959.

I was ordained in May, 1977, and served as pastor of the 14th of December Baptist Church, Manaus Brasil, for the next 19 months. Then I served the Tabernacle Baptist Church, Manaus, for the next 7 months while missionaries Paul and Wanda Hatcher were in the States on furlough. Then for the next 3 years, I served as pastor of the Peniel Baptist Church, also in Manaus, Amazonas, Brasil. Then returned to the 14th of December Baptist Church for the next 18 ½ years, until December of 2000. In January 2001, I organized the Comunhão Baptist Church in Manaus, and remained as pastor for the next 12 years, until December of 2012.

On the last day of 2012, I arrived in Lexington KY to care for my Dad in his retirement after 53 ½ years in Brazil serving with BFM. I had the indescribable privilege of caring for him for the next 5 years and 3 months, until his glorious promotion to Heaven on March 23rd, 2018, just 6 hours short of his 91st Birthday. While we were making plans for a small birthday party, his Lord and Savior whom he served so faithfully for so long, had better plans. He had his 91st Birthday party in Heaven, organized by our Lord Jesus himself.

From April 2018 to March 2020, I continued to do mission work, spending 2 months in Manaus, and one here in Lexington. Since being stranded because of the Pandemic, both my wife and I have been working for the past year at the BAF Fan Company here in Lexington. This year Lucia and I will celebrate 41 years of marriage.

During these over 40 years of ministry in Brazil, Dad and I had the privilege and honor to organize or assist over 40 churches in 5 states. I also taught at the Amazonas Baptist Theological College and the Good News Bible College in Manaus and was a visiting professor at the Equatorial Baptist College in Belém in the state of Para.

Presently we reside in in Lexington KY. We appreciate all of BFM’s support during this time, and even today, as we have been receiving the missionary’s pension since January 2021. We thank God for every remembrance of you, and to God be all glory, great things He has done!

Update, 2023:

Lucia and I would like to take this opportunity to bring you up to date on recent happenings. Two years ago, I had to have cataract surgery on my left eye. I haven’t had vision in my right eye since 2013, due to a botched surgery for retina dislocation in Brazil. The cataract surgery went well, but 2 weeks later the retina dislocated. After immediate surgery, I was able to begin a slow but complete recovery. But I no longer was able to work at the Big Fans Company in Lexington, where I had worked for about a year. Since then I have been unofficially retired. Lucia is presently working at the Preston Greens Senior Living center here in Lexington as a CNA (Senior Living Assistant).

I have not been able to return to Manaus yet to check on the churches but hopefully will be able to do so in July, our Lord willing and permitting.

We would like to express our deepest appreciation to all the Directors and each supporter of BFM, for your daily prayers and continued support to the Veterans Missionaries Pensioners Fund and the Founders Day Offering. We faithfully receive a portion of those funds each month. Also in December we received a blessed Christmas gift, for which we were surprised and eternally grateful.

May our Lord and Savior continue to bless each one of you as we all strive to be faithful!

Still in His Service,
Asa and Lucia Bratcher

Asa Mark & Lucia Bratcher
1950 Falling Leaves Ln
Lexington KY 40509-8013
859-806-9827 / cell phone
ambratcher56@yahoo.com

When you designate your offerings for ‘Veteran Missionaries Pension’ or for ‘Founder’s Month Offering’ [they are the same], they will be applied toward the continuing and on-going financial honor and support of these faithful life-long servants of Christ.

Click here to give now or you can mail your offering to:
BFM, c/o George Sledd
P.O. Box 471280
Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280


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VMP: Paul & Wanda Hatcher

PAUL & WANDA HATCHER

Paul and Wanda Hatcher served the Lord in partnership with BFM for over 40 years.

Paul grew up in Manaus, Brazil in the John and Alta Hatcher family. After marrying Wanda and pastoring here in the U.S., they returned to Manaus to serve in the Tabernacle Baptist Church. When John and Alta transitioned their church-planting ministry to the states in the south, Paul assumed the pastorate and leadership of Tabernacle Baptist Church. The church experienced phenomenal growth under his leadership and numerous churches were planted in the neighborhoods of Manaus.

In still later years, even while they were reaching Manaus, God laid it on their hearts to reach the states in NE Brazil. Through their outreach burden, vision, and efforts, numerous church-planting teams were sent out by Tabernacle Baptist Church, Manaus, Brazil, into the states and cities of the northeast. Churches that had been established in previous years were re-vitalized, and other church plants were established.

Just a few years ago, the Lord directed them to return to the States to provide care for their aging parents. They have faithfully fulfilled these services as well. They continue to serve and assist in their current home church in Clermont, FL.

Pray for them! Reach out to them through every means you can (call, write, e-mail), and let them know you still appreciate them and their service. They would love to hear from you personally, or from your Sunday School class, or your church leadership.

Paul & Wanda Hatcher
15905 Mercott Ct
Clermont, FL 34714
229-529-8497 / home
239-227-6551 / Paul’s cell
rphatcher@gmail.com

When you designate your offerings for ‘Veteran Missionaries Pension’ or for ‘Founder’s Month Offering’ [they are the same], they will be applied toward the continuing and on-going financial honor and support of these faithful life-long servants of Christ.

Click here to give now or you can mail your offering to:
BFM, c/o George Sledd
P.O. Box 471280
Lake Monroe, FL 32747-1280


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