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Joyce Parker
JOYCE PARKER
On November 19, 1949, my brother, Jimmy, and I both made our professions of faith on that Sunday morning and were both baptized that night. We went down into the water side-by-side at...view moreJOYCE PARKER
On November 19, 1949, my brother, Jimmy, and I both made our professions of faith on that Sunday morning and were both baptized that night. We went down into the water side-by-side at the same time! I remember that date because it was my Grandma Turner’s birthday. I was nine years old and my brother was eight, so it was not a big heavy task for Bro. J. Travis Gibson to baptize us this way. Our church, FBC, New London, Texas, began a building program shortly afterward. I remember that our whole congregation was involved in this project, even us kids. Some of us younger ones were scraping the paint off the windowpanes to reuse in the new Sunday School rooms. And we took iced tea and Kool Aide to the men doing the real work. After we were having services in the new church, our Daddy was ordained as a deacon and began driving the church bus, bringing people from miles around to hear the word of God by way of Bro. Gibson. His two sons, Joe and David, would ride with Daddy sometimes. The parsonage was next to the church and the bus was parked nearby. Mother also sent us three Turner kids with Daddy so that she could have some time to herself. Joe would lead us all in singing all the “newest” choruses in the early 1950’s.
We were a small church, and I do not remember having GA’s, but we did go to Piney Woods Baptist Encampment where we heard missionaries speak. When I was sixteen, Daddy was transferred from New London to Luling, and there at Central Baptist Church I enrolled in YWA’s. Then after graduation, I moved to Austin and joined Hyde Park Baptist Church in July, 1960, just a few months after Dr. Ralph M. Smith began his ministry there. One of my schoolmates at Brackenridge Hospital School Of Nursing, Sally Jo Bowmer, was a life-long member of HPBC and encouraged me to join. Here again, we had YWA’s. They had a “White Bible Ceremony” for me a few days before I married David Edgar Parker, April 19, 1962.
Going back a few years, while in high school, I went to Alto Frio Camp in Leaky, TX with our music director and his wife who played the piano/organ. It was there that I surrendered for “special service,” not really knowing what that might involve. With the help of a nurse friend of Mother’s, I enrolled in Brackenridge Hospital School of Nursing in Austin, and began considering this an answer to my call to “special service.” After graduation, I worked in several hospitals’ operating rooms here in Austin in my forty-four year career. I prayed for my patients, held their hands as they were being anesthetized for surgery, and sometimes as they were waking up afterward. At one hospital, I started the intravenous drips, and since I used a drop of local anesthesia, some of them called me “Painless Parker!” So…I considered the alleviating of anxiety about surgery as my mission.
As soon as I retired in 2005, I attended the Mission Fair at Hyde Park and signed up to knit scarves for the Magdalene Project, (I knitted 100 scarves!) and across the room was “talked into” teaching knitting for Friendship International of Austin. Did you know that working in Friendship is like being a Foreign Missionary without leaving town? We average 25 countries in a semester! What an experience for this East Texas girl! After only two semesters, I was invited to be on staff as Coordinator of Classes. I had no clue what this would involve, since I was told, “there’s nothing to it.” Yeah, there is! Making sure there are teachers for the 20 some-odd classes is a big deal! But what a blessing it has been to become friends with ladies from all over the world, and to let them know of Jesus’ love for them! This is my eighth year serving in Friendship.
About four years ago, (2011), I decided to go to the WMU First Tuesday Mission Luncheon---a few weeks before the election of officers. I was asked to be the Coordinator of WOM. I said, “I don’t even know what that is! How can I coordinate it?” The explanation is: WMU is the umbrella over WOM, ACTEEN’s, GA’s, RA’s, and MISSION FRIENDS. “But what does WOM stand for?” Women On Mission, duh. “How can I do this, since I’ve never even been in WMU before?” I was told to read about Moses and Gideon, because they had never done anything either. So, here I am still coordinating WOM!
This is the 125th Anniversary of the national WMU. The motto this year is THE STORY LIVES ON. I read a book by Wanda S. Lee, Executive Director, National WMU. The book has the same title, and I heard a voice in my head “You can do that!” Hers was a collection of WMU mission stories, so I began collecting Hyde Park mission stories to compile into a book, HYDE PARK’S MISSION STORY LIVES ON. Hopefully, it will be one that our church body can be proud to read, give, and own, because our story will live on until Jesus returns.view less