What are your experiences and areas of service that you believe will be valuable in your role as a General Conference delegate?

As a physician in Dublin I have had the opportunity to meet and serve the least and the lost.In1990 I founded Women in Need of God's Shelter to serve the battered women and children of middle Georgia.and have been their medical director since. I also was founding chair of our Habitat for Humanity and United Way chapters.I serve as theMedical Director of the Joy Clinic providing free medical care to the working poor of Laurens County. As Stepping Stone Medical Director I provide free care to childhood and adult victims of sexual assault.

At Pine Forest I have served as Admin. Board Chair, Leadership Forum Chair, Missions Outreach Chair and Conference Lay Delegate for approximately 10 years. I have also served on the Wesleyan Covenant Leadership Team, and I now serve on the SGAGMC Executive Leadership Team. As the Prayer Chair for our SGA conference, I have served with some amazing prayer warriors causing me to have new appreciation for the vital importance of travailing prayer in the future of our Global Methodist mission!

Describe why you believe that God has potentially called you to serve as a General Conference delegate.

I was reluctant to offer as a delegate until I received a nudge from the Holy Spirit urging me to to do so in order to promote the critical and fundamental importance of prayer in our Global Methodist movement. I sincerely believe that the appreciation and application of prayer were 2 of the fundamental shortcomings of the UMC. It is my vision that every GMC church will prayerfully select a prayer coordinator. The Presiding Elder for the district or subdistrict will then create a district wide prayer team which could meet periodically by Zoom or in person to lift high prayerful petitions on behalf of their district, the Global Methodist Mission AND the Kingdom at large.

History teaches us that if we are to become a missionary movement as the first Methodists were in the time of Wesley and Whitefield, we must once again become a praying church!

We also recognize that all of the Great Awakenings were preceded by prolonged, travailing prayer. My experience as chair of the South Georgia GMC prayer team convinces me that prayer needs to be more than the "point of the spear." It must be the very foundation of our Global Methodist effort to take our faith beyond our church pews and walls proclaiming Christ to a lost world!