ATLANTA (ABP) — Two long-serving Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionaries to New York's diplomatic community are moving to North Carolina, and the organization has no plans to replace them.
Ana and David D'Amico have served as missionaries at the United Nations for the past eight years. Beginning Feb. 18, they will develop additional ministries from their new residence in Raleigh, N.C., while continuing their work as part of CBF's Transformational Development Team. The D'Amicos will continue to attend United Nations' conferences and connect other CBF missions personnel to conferences relevant to the Fellowship's ministry worldwide.
“We will represent the Fellowship at the U.N. and will continue to promote issues relating to human rights, encouraging our people and churches as we have always done from New York,” Ana D'Amico said. “We will continue to do that from North Carolina.”
The move to North Carolina will add another aspect to their ministry, as they begin work among persons of Hispanic origin living in North Carolina.
“The Hispanic population in N.C. has increased considerably,” Ana said. “We will be ministering through the churches and existing organizations that are assisting persons of Hispanic background. This falls within the focus of the strategic plan to minister to the most neglected.”
Fellowship spokesman Lance Wallace said the D'Amicos “will continue for a while as U.N. liaisons” but will gradually pass that responsibility to Dean Dickens, who is CBF's associate coordinator for North American mission teams. He is based in Dallas.
“The [D'Amicos'] assignment to the U.N. was part of a mid-1990's strategy of ministry to the diplomatic communities of Brussels, Washington and New York,” Wallace said. “Reassignments, budgetary constraints and shifts in strategic priorities the past decade led to this final move in dismantling that approach.”
He said several other CBF missions teams will continue to provide a Fellowship presence in the New York metropolitan area.
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