Setting Our Sails: A New Year’s Greeting from our Executive Director/Treasurer
Happy New Year! See below for a New Year's Greeting from Valerie Carter Smith, our Executive Director/Treasurer. She shares her report from our 121st Annual Meeting and gives us a fresh vision for the new year. Read on for a written version of the Annual Report of the Executive Director/Treasurer, initially presented at the WMUV Annual Meeting in November 2021.
A changing world can be a frightening place yet filled with opportunities to engage the mission of God anew! God says to us as recorded in the prophetic book of Isaiah 43:19 (KJV), “Behold, I will do a new thing: now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.” A changing world can feel like a wilderness or a desert but can be a mission-field paradise if we choose to set our sails to the wind!
WMU of Virginia is comprised of women who unashamedly engages in the mission of God in the world. Women that I am blessed to work alongside of dare to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for refugees, teach children, support missionaries, and even bridge racial gaps. Most of us belong to the churches of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, and we bond together, and we do not shrink back! We discern where God is moving and in our meager humble attempts, we move with God.
On this 121st Annual Meeting of the WMU of Virginia, we recognize the tenacity of our Board of Directors under the leadership of Lucianne Warren to make the hard decisions that will help us be a movement of women not dying on the vine, but alive. Our Board, empowered by Christ and with a love for all things WMU, is working diligently to ensure our commitment to our core values and that generations to come will to have WMU.
“A changing world can feel like a wilderness or a desert but can be a mission-field paradise if we choose to set our sails to the wind.”
As we have reorganized our staff structure on January 1, 2021, to position WMUV for the challenges of today, on this 121st Annual Meeting of the WMU of Virginia, we recognize the very capable staff that labors daily for Christ. It is with gratefulness that I share with you that today we have an emotionally healthy team. I pledge to you that as the leader of this dynamic team, I will continue with intentionality, to nurture organizational health for the benefit of our work. It is my desire that we be faithful to the great cloud of witnesses in the work of WMUV that still live and cheer us on, and to those who have gone to be with the Lord.
We celebrate all that God is doing through WMUV. Our children and students, adults and through the ministry of our beloved CrossRoads Camp and Conference Center we see God at work. Moving into next year, we will continue our due diligence on multiple levels. For one, we will continue with Campaign140 and launch our Stories from the Deck to raise $275K to rebuild the deck at Hunt Hall. The deck at CrossRoads is like the front porch on traditional southern homes. It is there where individual retreat guests sit in silence and experience God. It is there on the deck at Hunt Hall where student’s line-up along the rail listening to the Little Piney River run. On the deck at Hunt Hall our culinary team provides an outdoor lunch taco bar for campers, cabin-by-cabin. Stories from the Deck will give honor to God for that space and mobilize giving.
Thank you for electing me as your fourth executive director/treasurer of the Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia. For God’s call and for your faith in me, I am sincerely thankful. At WMUV, we continue to move forward maintaining as the new springs forth, we set our sails to the wind.
Valerie Carter Smith,
WMUV Executive Director/Treasurer