5,000 EXPECTED AT MISSIONARY SERVICE

It has been about five years since Jim Bryant served overseas as a missionary for the Southern Baptist Convention, but he wont forget the appointment service that took his family to Bangladesh and then Thailand."There's a satisfaction about your work and what you have if you know you are where you're supposed to be," said Bryant, who now serves as director of missions for the Cane Creek-Stoddard Baptist Association in Poplar Bluff. It gives you a peace about your job regardless of what you're doing."About 37 people, including a student missionary who served with Bryant, will be appointed Saturday afternoon to work as foreign missionaries for the Southern Baptist Convention. The commissioning service, "Show Me, Send Me" begins at 2 p.m. at the Show Me Center. A walk-around display of mission booths will open at 10 a.m.

Many of the missionaries being appointed today will live in conditions that most Americans would consider below the poverty level, Bryant said.

The service challenges people to think more about giving money or supporting mission work when they see someone who is willing to devote their life, he said. Appointments with the Foreign Mission Board range from just two years to a lifetime career. The average is a four-year stay.

Bryant served 11 years as a foreign missionary. After two years of language study, he worked in church development in Bangladesh from 1982 to 1986, and then as a pastor in Bangkok, Thailand, until 1991. "Not everyone is a preacher," Bryant said, adding that missionaries serve as nurses, teachers and even pilots. "There are about as many jobs as there are people."Almost 4,000 people serve as Southern Baptist missionaries in more than 140 countries around the world. "Other than the worldwide Roman Catholic Church, I don't know of a larger group,' said Roy Jones, director of missions for the Cape Girardeau Baptist Association.

The commissioning service is more than just an event for Baptists, Jones said. "It's also for people who are curious about how missions work and what Southern Baptists are all about." Although Southern Baptists, one of the largest Protestant churches in the U.S., sponsor missionaries around the world, some aren't serving strictly as missionaries. Through a mission-related program, people serve as teachers, hospital workers or at other jobs to create a Christian presence in countries where missionaries aren't allowed, Jones said.

By the end of his stay in Thailand, Jim Bryant could see the effects of his Christian presence. A small prison ministry he began grew to a weekly worship service for prisoners with more than 400 of them attending. Most of his other work in Bangladesh and Thailand was through flood-relief and agriculture-development programs. Bangladesh is an impoverished Asian country about the size of Arkansas with a population of 130 million. Thailand is a port city that attracts many political refugees from its neighbors, Bryant said.