> Putting Work to Faith

Stephen Smith spent weeks roaming winding streets crowded with people, and wandering his way into residential neighborhoods and through games of bocce ball – observing it all through his camera lens.

Robert and Rhonda Braun, husband and wife, spent a month in a makeshift medical office among disheveled shanties, treating the hundreds of sick that formed long, snaking lines in the hazy heat, waiting for help.

Kay Lyn Carlson comforts and counsels men and women who come to her clinic looking for relief from a heavy burden.

Each of these people have a different story to tell, but all four of these men and women have used skills from their careers in the name of their faith.

Stephen Smith’s “Vision Trip”

“There’s more to spreading the Word than teaching and preaching,” Smith said. “There are those like myself who take photographs, or those who heal, and that’s our way of helping people and our tools to work with.”

Smith’s tools took him to Lisbon, Portugal, on what he describes as a vision trip. Smith traveled with the Kansas Nebraska Convention of Southern Baptists, who hoped to speak with people and get to know the area, that they might discover potential sites for Internet cafes. These cafes would be a place where people of Lisbon could relax, talk and share with other Christians, Smith said.

During this particular trip, Smith toured the city with his camera in hand, hoping to capture the flavor of the area in his own way, he said. The images he created will be used throughout the Kansas and Nebraska area to promote awareness of the Portuguese lifestyle and to encourage others to make mission trips to the area as well.

“I’ve been given a gift of being able to capture life with a camera,” Smith said. “When those images can be used to inspire other people it’s just one way for me to do what I feel God has called everyone to do.”

Medicine for the Soul

Robert and Rhonda Braun have also attended mission trips with Smith, but for different reasons. A gastroneurologist and a nurse, the husband and wife used their medical expertise in a mission trip to Belem, Brazil.

The two, along with professionals from across the United States and Brazil, erected the Tent of Hope. There, hundreds lined up daily to share their problems and seek help from the doctors, dentists, lawyers and social workers who were assembled.

The Brauns treated hundreds of patients, doled out donated prescriptions and gave advice for further medical treatment.

“We were there because we felt compelled to use the education and the skills that we had received to bring help to someone else,” Robert said. “And at the same time, we wanted to bring them the message of Jesus.”

Robert describes the inhabitants of the area as among the poorest of the poor. He regularly treated patients who came from small shanties lacking electricity or sewage.

Restoring Broken Hearts

Kay Lyn Carlson’s work does not take her out of the country, but she, too, has found a way to integrate faith into her career.

Carlson helped found and runs the Abortion Recovery Center in Topeka, which provides both Christian and non-religious counseling and services to men and women after an abortion.
In her own crisis as a young woman, Carlson said she found a Christian counselor who helped her out of one of her darkest times, after which she realized that she wanted to do the same with her life.

“God is our creator and I don’t see how anyone can be healed without God,” she said. “In our Bible studies and our curriculum, we do have the presence of God, and we search to God for healing.”

Carlson leads counseling, Bible studies, support groups and workshops for those whose lives have been affected by abortion. She has also been a leader for Operation Outcry, a voice for more than 2,000 women who have given testimonies of how they were hurt by abortion, and who would like to see it abolished, she said.