Sunday, April 18, 2004

MACON, Miss. (BP)--Thomas Hamill's faith was just beginning to grow when he was captured by militants in Iraq, the pastor of the church he attended in Mississippi said.

Greg Duncan has been pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Macon, Miss., for about six months, the same length of time Hamill has been in Iraq, working as a fuel truck driver for a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Hamill was last seen on videotape April 9 with his captors threatening to kill him within 12 hours if U.S. forces did not withdraw from Fallujah. The deadline passed, and no word of his status has surfaced.

Duncan said during the past six months he has learned about Hamill through his family and through a visit the two had when Hamill made an emergency visit in February for his wife's heart surgery.

"I have been told he had professed a relationship with Christ several years ago but had not been discipled and brought into the church and into an actual committed relationship with Christ," Duncan told Baptist Press in a telephone interview. "He had just kind of been on the fringes. We sat down for several hours and talked, and he communicated to me that he recognized that he hadn't been living the life he should be living and desired to be more faithful."

Duncan said the first contact he had with Hamill was when Hamill's wife, Kellie, visited Calvary and then wrote an e-mail to the pastor. She requested that he write a letter of encouragement to her husband, mentioning that if he did not have a relationship with Christ he should consider it, and if he did have one, he could start anew. Duncan wrote the letter.

"He told me when he came home for her surgery, he'd received it and appreciated it," Duncan said. "His aunt had given him a Bible that he was reading, not only reading it himself but sharing it with others there. So I really feel like God has been drawing Thomas to Himself for some time now, and whether or not he had a relationship several years ago or whether it's a newfound relationship, I feel confident in some of the things that he's expressed." More...