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WYOMING — Longtime church member Carol Miller, of Wyoming, still remembers the drama of her baptism.
She was 12 years old, had studied for weeks, wore a white robe, and was fully immersed during a sunrise service on an Easter Sunday.
“I had long, blonde curls and they got all wet,” she recalled. “The water was cold. It was unheated back then.”
Present-day baptisms may use warmer water, but traditions still play a large role at First Baptist Church on East Eighth Street, which will celebrate its 125th anniversary on Oct. 15 with an 11:15 a.m. worship service followed by a luncheon.
“We trust in Christ as our savior and baptism is a public profession of our faith in Christ,” Pastor Sam Garnett said, explaining that being immersed and then re-emerging from the water “symbolizes death, burial and resurrection.”
“I remember the day I gave my heart to the Lord,” said Deacon Dick Miller, who is Carol’s husband, explaining that “personal relationship” with Jesus Christ is the most important thing in his life.
Church members want as many other people as possible to share that experience, so they devote themselves to many outreach programs.
When church member and Wyoming resident Bonnie Chocallo, for example, delivers the lap robes she crochets to patients at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Plains Township, an inspirational booklet of readings called Daily Bread will be tucked into each gift bag, along with toiletries, puzzles and other small items.
Later this month, a Halloween-themed outreach will provide young trick-or-treaters not only with candy and fruit snacks but also with bible tracts, all distributed at a stand near the church.
“We gave out about 100 last year,” Garnett said.
The church also has DVDs of an evangelist preaching to give out to the children’s parents, he added.
The church’s outreach extends beyond Northeastern Pennsylvania too, as members support two groups of missionaries —the Dubish family, which evangelizes in India and the Hinkle family, the ministry of which takes its members to nursing homes and retirement centers.
With help from members of Calvary Bible Church in Wilkes-Barre, which Garnett also serves, volunteers from First Baptist also spent two days assembling 10,000 scripture tracts that were distributed in Brazil during the 2016 World Cup.
The tracts were written in Portuguese, but the volunteers didn’t stop to see if they could recognize or translate any words.
“We were working too fast,” Carol Miller said.
Looking back at her youth, Miller said the church provided many opportunities for fellowship.
“We’d roast corn over an open fire, and at Christmas time, we’d ride around in the back of a truck, sitting on hay and singing Christmas carols. Then we’d come back for hot chocolate and marshmallows and cookies. All that good stuff.”
She drifted away from the church when she was in high school, and it wasn’t until she had a daughter that she came back. “I really had a feeling that my daughter needed to be in Sunday school and learn what Christianity is all about,” she said. “Thank God. He called me back.”
Newcomers are always welcome, said Dick Miller, who predicted they will find Garnett’s sermons inspiring, if not life-changing.
“If you left here not knowing Jesus as your savior,” he said, “you weren’t listening.”