Guest speakers for Thursday’s noon meeting of the Minden Lions Club will be Ron and Alana Greenwich. Their presentation will be on “35 years in Brazil.”
Ron and Alana met while students at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark. They later worked at the Methodist Children’s Home in Waco, Texas, and the Arkansas Baptist Home for Children in Monticello, Ark. After Ron completed his MSW at the University of Houston, he worked as program supervisor for the Human Development Center in Warren, Ark.
After a visit with Alana’s missionary parents, Bill and Jerry Ichter, in Brazil, Ron and Alana both began sensing God was calling them to the mission field. In 1983 they were appointed as missionaries by the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (at that time called the Foreign Mission Board). Ron and Alana left for Brazil with their three children and embarked on the most blessed adventure of their lives. At the end of a year of language school, their youngest son was born and they moved to Florianópolis in the Southern part of Brazil. There they worked as church planters and were very involved in social ministries through the churches.
Ron and Alana retired to take care of Alana’s parents in Minden, and it was such a blessing to be able to do that. After they both passed away, the International Mission Board called them back to Brazil for three years to mentor the new missionaries that arrived in Brazil during their first year of language acquisition and cultural adaptation. They returned to Minden in late July 2023 and are back home in Minden. Ron and Alana have four children and 15 grandchildren.
Ron and Alana will be introduced Thursday by Lion Rev. Leon Boggs.
The Minden Lions Club meets Thursdays at noon at the American Legion Memorial Home, located at 119 W. Pine St. in downtown Minden.