By Bob Allen
Former President Jimmy Carter turns a youthful 91 today, with plans for a private birthday celebration in Americus, Ga.
The Carter Center joined the celebration by discounting the regular $8 adult admission to the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta to 91 cents for the day Oct. 1. As usual, children 16 and under get in for free.
The museum celebration includes a drawing for a signed copy of Carter’s 1995 memoir, Keeping Faith. Visitors may drop off cards for Carter at the center, and staff will make sure he receives them.
Last Sunday, Carter told the Sunday school class he teaches at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., that despite being treated for cancer, he plans to join Habitat for Humanity’s 32nd annual Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project Nov. 1-6 in Nepal.
According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Carter said plans this week included traveling to New York on Monday for meetings with Cuban President Raul Castro and with Venezuela’s president related to the Carter Center’s efforts to combat river blindness before heading back to Atlanta Tuesday for his third round of cancer treatment.
The fourth treatment, he said, “will be delayed a while, because Rosalynn and I are going to Nepal.”
The New Baptist Covenant, a movement aimed at uniting Baptists in the United States across racial lines started by Carter in 2007, tweeted out a Happy Birthday wish to the former president in an e-card with a caption from his address to the New Baptist Covenant in Atlanta in 2008: “We are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Despite our inevitable human differences, under this simple but profound banner we Baptists and other Christians can and must stand united.”
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