SALINAS - A six-hour drive opened up a missions opportunity with global impact for a 20-member volunteer team from Central Coast Baptist Association in early July.

The team, led by Becky Vick of First Baptist Church of Prunedale in Salinas, cared for as many as 200 children during the Middle-Eastern Baptist Conference, held each year on the campus of Biola University in La Mirada. But the volunteers saw the reach of their ministry stretch more than half a world away.

"Serving the families at the conference was an awesome experience," said Vick, who led her first team to the gathering in 2003 when she was youth minister at Valley Baptist Church in Salinas. "You can see the hope of Christ for the Middle-East through them. By being part of the conference, we felt we were actually part of God's plan globally."

Now in its 28th year, the July 4-7 event drew some 1,700 people from across California and the United States, as well as Canada and the Middle-East, said Khalil "Charlie" Hanna, who served as a California Southern Baptist Convention language church starting strategist for 26 years before retiring in 2005.

"We have two purposes in gathering - worship and training," Hanna explained. "It is a wonderful ministry to be able to enjoy fellowship with other Middle-Eastern people."

Jason Al-Nimri, pastor of Bakersfield Arabic Baptist Church, said the "conference is a great chance for us to build good relationships between all the Arabic churches in California and churches from other states as well." 

"At the same time, Arabic people in the United States live in two cultures. We need this conference to help us understand what is going on in our culture and what other believers are doing. It helps us prepare the new generation for the future."

Al-Nimri noted the focus of this year's event was to "try to do important things to help the younger generation."

Hanna said the family-oriented conference would not have been as successful without volunteer help.

Because Arabic families rarely have opportunities to fellowship with so many other Middle-Eastern Christians, Vick added it was a blessing to help parents feel free to take in the full conference.

"The appreciation they felt was apparent every moment we were there," she said. "They constantly praised us and that gave us motivation to continue even when we were really tired. What we were doing gave them freedom to fellowship with each other because they knew their children were well cared for."

Even the language barrier didn't pose a serious obstacle.

"Some of the families spoke very little English, but it didn't seem to matter," Vick said. "Jesus Christ was the center of this conference, and the communication was just fine because we have Christ in common. It was an amazing experience."

The volunteers from Central Coast Association conducted an age-graded program - preschool through sixth grade - that included a Vacation Bible School in the morning, recreation during the afternoon and children's church in the evening. The fewest number of children in their care was 90 and over the course of the weekend it ranged as high as 200.

Attendance has grown so large in recent years that Vick knew her home church wouldn't be able to field enough volunteers to care for that many children. So she turned to Mike Stewart, director of missions for Central Coast Association.

"Dr. Stewart opened up the opportunity for it to be a cooperative effort of our entire association," Vick said. "God put 20 people in place. The association financed all the supplies for the weekend. We couldn't have done this without the association's help.

"It was a busy time. Honestly, we really could have used at least 10 other people to have gone along with us. But it was very, very rewarding. God really blessed."

Volunteers from Valley, Salinas got involved in 2003 because God spoke to their hearts about the importance of doing missions in California.

"As a church, we had done mission trips to Germany and England and Mississippi," Vick said. "But being a California Southern Baptist, I felt we needed to be doing missions in the state too. So I called Tony Ahaev, the CSBC's language church starting specialist, and he suggested the Middle-Eastern Baptist Conference might be a good project for us to do in the state of California."

The Central Coast team began preparing for their assignment back in February.

Even when several team members had to drop out at the last minute, God provided replacements from as far away as Redlands and even Kansas, Vick said.

"This was the best team. Everyone worked together so well," she observed. "The whole experience was just wonderful.

"There were at least 15 decisions made among the children. Some of them were first-time decisions for Christ, and others were rededications and commitments to Christian service. It was an incredible blessing."