| 6/30/2009 3:00:00 PM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Amy Fisher, fourth from left, with a group of people from their church in Lima, Peru, named Missionary Baptist Church of El Agustino. They worked together to form a new church in a neighborhood that didn’t have one in early 2007. Fisher, a missionary with the International Mission Board, is returning to Ica, Peru, on Wednesday as a strategy coordinator. (Submitted photo) |
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| Jacob Laskowski, a 2005 graduate of Shawe Memorial High School and 2009 Ball State University graduate, far right, prays with a group of men at BSU last year. Also in the photo are, from left, BSU students Quentin Quigley and Cody Owens. (Submitted photo |
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Courierarea natives answer call to serve
Pat Whitney
Courier Staff Writer
Courierarea natives Amy Fisher and Jacob Laskowski answered a similar call.
Both are preparing to serve as full-time missionaries, one abroad and one in the U.S.
Both are inspired to bring others closer to God, one soul at a time - one in a poverty-stricken desert and the other on a college campus.
Fisher, of Bedford, Ky., is a 1996 Trimble County High School graduate and alumna of Hanover College. She will leave Wednesday for Peru, where she will serve as strategy coordinator in Ica, opening churches in areas where none exist and bringing faith to a people endangered by hopelessness. She is one of 89 new missionaries going overseas with the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in 2009 and recently returned from training in Virginia.
Fisher, 31, was first exposed to missionary work early in life, participating in Bedford Baptist Church's Girls in Action mission organization from first through sixth grades.
"It was at Hanover College, however, where I had international friends, that the message became clear," she said.
At Hanover, Fisher graduated in 2000 with a double major in business administration and Spanish.
"I knew I wanted to go overseas to work," she said. "On my first trip to South America, I used my business degree working in the International Mission Board business office. It was there that I got the call to serve."
After returning to the United States, Fisher began taking seminary classes at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in hopes of becoming a missionary.
Fisher served as a journeyman for the mission board in Bolivia from 2000 to 2002. In 2006, she moved to Lima, Peru. When an earthquake ravaged the area in 2007, she moved to Ica as a relief worker.
Her own life's work opened up before her.
"Maybe 500 people had died, but tens of thousands had lost their homes," she said. "I saw total devastation. People had lost everything. In their moment of need, we shared food with them, but they were looking for something deeper than that. The doors really opened in such a great way; hearts were open to the gospel of Jesus Christ."
A shortage of water and syncretism - the attempted union of opposing religious philosophies - will be her two greatest challenges, she said.
"The people try to mix their tribal religion and old beliefs with the new teaching. That can pose a real challenge."
Laskowski, a Madison native who graduated from Shawe Memorial High School in 2005 and Ball State University in 2009, has accepted a full-time position with the Fellowship of Catholic University Students, or FOCUS. He will do mission work at Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., organizing retreats, regional gatherings, Bible studies and student leader meetings on campus.
He cites the "whole service attitude" nurtured at Shawe and Ball State for his career decision.
"This past year, my involvement with the FOCUS team at Ball State reminded me of the incredible need so many of our nation's college students have- to see people their own age committed to the heroic pursuit of strong values and virtues as they search to find their identity," he said. "I witnessed a transition of lifestyles over the campus that was phenomenal."
While at Ball State, Laskowski organized a men's rosary group on campus to pray for the young women on campus.
"The campus scene is incredibly detrimental to women with men making disgusting remarks to girls walking by," he said. "We wanted the women to know that there are also men on campus who will hold up their dignity. Many women in my classes, even those who are non-Catholic, thanked us for what we were doing."
By year's end, the group of college men who met every Friday at 7 a.m. to pray had grown to 20.
Laskowski, 23, who earned a bachelor of science degree in public relations, is attending a "missionary boot camp" at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Ill., including five weeks of training with more than 245 other FOCUS missionaries. Instead of choosing a more lucrative career in public relations, he is motivated to foster values and good morals in tomorrow's leaders, he said.
"FOCUS takes recent college graduates like myself, trains us, and puts us right back onto the college campus where we help bring students closer to Christ and the church," he said. "Sent out in teams, missionaries invest their time in students' lives through Bible studies and one-on-one discipleship. The goal of FOCUS is to win students for Jesus Christ through close personal relationships, and then build them up to be peer leaders so that they can do the same for others.
"Today, I can truly say that being involved with FOCUS is like having a front-row seat for watching God work miracles in college students' lives," he said. "Now, I hope to go and create the same effect by serving as a full-time missionary in this hostile mission field - the college campus."
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