Women's Missionary Society

 

 

 

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WMS 75th Anniversary

WMS Beginnings

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Notice of Meeting

The WMS Closing Dinner will be held on June 18th at Smitty's Restaurant, Bayer's Lake at 6:30 PM. All ladies and friends of the church are invited to join us. Please email if you plan to attend.

75th Anniversary Party

The members of the Women's Missionary Society, and their guests, celebrated the society's 75th anniversary on June 5th, 2008 at Swiss Chalet, Bayer's Lake. The turnout was wonderful. 

Thanks to all who attended and who continue to work to make WMS such a longstanding success!

Enjoy our photos!


Women's Missionary Society members and guests celebrate the 75th Anniversary of the WMS on June 5, 2008, Halifax, NS.


Mrs. Olive Romans, one of the first members of the WMS, 
who also has memories of its inception 75 years ago. 


WMS Beginnings

I invite you on a brief journey. We’re travelling down the Hammonds Plains Road, probably on foot. No fast moving cars, no blinding headlights. It’s June 28,1933 about 7 p.m. We’re headed for the First Baptist parsonage. When we arrive, Mrs. Ethel Jones greets us. She’s our pastor’s wife. She leads us to the parlour, and we meet three other women. They are engaged in serious conversation about a new topic – missions.

It has been only a few decades now since Hannah Maria Norris, of Canso, appealed to prominent Nova Scotian businessmen like Charles Tupper for funding for the unthinkable: a woman travelling alone to Burma to help people. They sympathized with her, but couldn’t come up with the funds, so she had barnstormed her way across the Maritimes, organizing thirty-two new groups called Women’s Missionary Societies. And now, in 1933, these societies are springing up in churches everywhere.

Mrs. Jones wants us to be one of these churches. Attempts were initiated before, but didn’t succeed. So, strategies are developed. They form a “look out” committee. It’s aim: to look for new members. It works. In the first year and a half membership jumps from four to seventeen.

It’s Depression Era. Not an easy time to be generous. People are starving in the east; crops are failing in the west. But two barrels and one box of clothes are sent from this community to prairie farmers. A young Baptist pastor, Rev. Douglas of Weyburn, Saskatchewan thanks us in a letter to the WMS. That young preacher later went into politics. We now know him as T.C. Douglas, former NDP leader, named by the CBC as Canada’s greatest Canadian, and father of our national health care system. Now we have something for which to thank him!

So as we leave the parsonage and say good night to Mrs. Jones, we might want to encourage her that, indeed, this time, her plans will succeed. That for the next seven decades, the church women will entertain missionaries from all over the globe in our homes, in the parsonage, and in the pulpit. And we might want to encourage her that the earlier generosity will prevail in the area of “home missions” as well: whether it’s providing mittens to children, baby clothes to local crisis centres, or Bibles to the Gideons.

Next month our society celebrates its 75th anniversary, and we are still blessed to rely on the counsel of some of those founding members. They have led us throughout the 20th century and their inspiration will continue to lead us in the 21st century.

Contributed by Sandra Macleod, First Baptist Church, Hammonds Plains.

 

© First Baptist Church Hammonds Plains, 2009. All rights reserved.

Images used with permission from www.morguefile.com digital archive unless otherwise noted..