Cities pulse like living organisms, their centers pumping commerce through arterial streets and squeezing people into, out from and through the organism. When a city takes a blow to the heart like several Gulf of Mexico rim cities did from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, it could be life threatening.

With the promise of a job in hand and her 14-year-old son in tow, Shantell Cotton left California seeking a better life in North Carolina. When the job evaporated, her money lasted less than a month and Shantell spent Christmas in 2004 in a Salvation Army funded hotel.

David Phelps remembers the phone call like it was yesterday even though it happened more than three years ago. Phelps, Atlantic Baptist Association director of missions, received a frantic call Sept. 18, 2003 from the pastor at Sealevel Baptist Church, who was standing on US Route 70 in waist-deep water as Hurricane Isabel ravaged Core Sound and eastern North Carolina counties.

Imagine more than a thousand people cheering and applauding for you—and hundreds of them wearing T-shirts with your picture on the front. Missionaries Tom and Susan Canady received that unusual treatment from Honduran Baptists when they left Honduras in 2007 after 30 years of service.

Bike after colorful bike rumbles and snarls into the parking lot. Riders rattle their engines for one good, last roar, then let them idle while stripping their helmets. Bikers on this warm spring day are not at a bike rally, but a worship rally at their church—Freedom Biker Church in Garner.

A predominantly white congregation on the wrong side of the interstate opens its doors to a black pastor and his new congregation.

Exactly one week before Thanksgiving 2006 a twister ripped through a residential area in Riegelwood—just west of Wilmington—killing nine people and leaving more than 40 residences to rebuild and repair. North Carolina Baptists wasted no time organizing a blitz build—the first ever for North Carolina Baptist Men.